


beautiful sinner

by awkwardedgeworth



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (not shown), Angst, Blood and Injury, Bullying, Enemies to Lovers, Harassment, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Misunderstandings, Psycho Pass AU, full list of warnings inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27860958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardedgeworth/pseuds/awkwardedgeworth
Summary: It's pouring again."This is the Criminal Investigations Department of the Public Safety Bureau. Access to this street is restricted for the safety of residents. All residents are expected to comply and evacuate immediately. I repeat, this is the Criminal Investigations...."The van comes to a smooth stop and Sakusa raises his head up at the echoes of an automatic lock hissing open.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 25
Kudos: 132





	beautiful sinner

**Author's Note:**

> cw: blood, hand to hand combat/sparring, knives, guns, limb dismemberment*, bombing, alcohol, smoking, spoilers for season 1 of psycho pass, bullying/harassment
> 
> *limb dismemberment is brief. skip from "Sakusa acts without" and jump to "He looks up, temple pressing"
> 
> if you see minor grammatical errors, please look the other way hahaaa i will fix it at a later date. endless thanks and love to immune for reading this and combing through it to find mistakes
> 
> a quick run down of psycho pass terms if you need a refresher:  
> -dominator: guns used by registered inspectors and enforcers of the public safety bureau
> 
> -inspector: normal citizens with a healthy psycho pass, in charge of the analyst and enforcers assigned to them
> 
> -enforcers: latent criminals that are only allowed outside for the sole purpose of hunting and eliminating other latent criminals like themselves. they can't do anything without the explicit approval of their inspectors and will face consequences for disobeying orders
> 
> -analysts: the supportive role in the division, they sit in headquarters and handle all non-fieldwork tasks
> 
> -sibyl system: a proprietary hardware and software used to analyze the criminality in each and every citizen in the form of psycho passes, which include a hue (a reflection of someone's stress levels, based on a color assigned at birth) and crime coefficient (a number based on of someone's probability to commit a crime)
> 
> -psycho pass: a quantification of one's mental health, read by the sibyl system through cymatic brain scans and other proprietary methods. one's psycho pass influences one's education, hobbies, future careers/promotions and one's friend circle and dating pool. law enforcement and the ministry of welfare public safety bureau uses this to hunt down criminals.

In the 22nd century, the human mind and criminal potential are measured and read instantaneously using cymatic brain scans. All souls are recorded, profiled and quantified on this basis and given the term "Psycho Pass" by the Sibyl's System oracle judgments.

* * *

It's pouring again.

" _This is the Criminal Investigations Department of the Public Safety Bureau. Access to this street is restricted for the safety of residents. All residents are expected to comply and evacuate immediately. I repeat, this is the Criminal Investigations...._ "

The van comes to a smooth stop. Sakusa raises his head up at the echoes of an automatic lock hissing open as the rest of the van's inhabitants open their eyes from a long slumber. The doors begin to part, allowing the red and blue lights from the outside to enter.

His right hand aches in the rain. There are two blondes standing underneath a tent several feet away, one a familiar face, the other a stranger.

Sakusa pulls the Dominator from the storage unit, linking to the system as the gun confirms his user authentication. The welcome screen flashes in front of his eyes as Akaashi's briefly glow bright blue as well.

"Is that the new one?"

He has a hard time reading Akaashi on a good day. Today isn't any different, "Yes, it's strange isn't it, to make a sudden career change," He sighs and pockets the Dominator inside the lapels of his thigh-length jacket, "Will you be okay?"

Will he? Who knows. 

He shrugs, heading over to the tent.

Akaashi follows.

It's warm under here with a heater drying his half-wet hair. Yachi shuffles from feet to feet, sensing the elephant in the room as everyone assembles. She's easily the smallest out of them standing at a head and shoulder shorter than Sakusa.

His right hand throbs under his gloves. He really should've eaten a painkiller before leaving Headquarters. He feels sick, his stomach coiling nervously as ignores the new Inspector next to her, hoping that it's someone's sick joke of a hologram.

Yachi bites her lip before she clears her throat.

"I want you all to meet someone new," She says, gesturing to the blond beside her, most decidedly not a hologram, "This is Miya Atsumu. He's Shepherd 2 from today onwards."

He stares at the ground, watching the water droplets collect in an uneven dip in the concrete.

"Pleasure to meet you all," He hears Atsumu say. He's wearing an expensive suit under his blue jacket, the reflective 103 sticker on the arm sleeves mocking him. The shoes look expensive too. 

Akaashi only mumbles his introductions. Sakusa doesn't do anything much, tensing. Fingertips come into view, then a hand, the nails trimmed short.

"Sakusa-san, right?"

Sakusa doesn't take his hand out of his pocket, gripping the Dominator until his hands are hurting. Yachi tenses visibly beside them, her blue shoulders rising and rising to her ears. 

Akaashi says nothing.

He finally unsticks his throat, twisting around so he's facing the abandoned block where the latent criminal had ran off to, "Let's just find the target and stop wasting time—"

" _Hey, you._ "

Sakusa stops in his tracks. The tent is silent.

He turns around to see Atsumu glaring, his eyes blue, pointing the Dominator at him.

"Inspector Miya!—" Yachi lunges forward, trying to tug Atsumu's elbows down. She shoots Sakusa a frantic look, pale, "I understand that this is your first day on the job but!—"

" _Was it you who killed him?_ "

Sakusa stands still. He doesn't move.

"Your Crime Coefficient is 287!"

Sakusa keeps his voice flat, shoving his right hand back into his pocket to hide the shaking of his fingers. He thinks of standing by a cliff, the sea before him, dark and calm, and not of the brilliant teal in Atsumu's eyes, "I'm a latent criminal, of course it would be high."

"Are you sure it's because you're not responsible for my brother's death?"

The rain falls harder. Sakusa could barely see the police holograms of Komissas holding back the crowd, the water blurring everything like Monet's impressionism. The dark patch over yonder is the abandoned block, odd squares of neon signs showing through the storm. Yachi inhales sharply.

He feels his mouth twitch in a smile.

The sea in his mind shifts. He's waking up in a hospital room, numb on the right side of his body, the overwhelming scent of cleaners in his nose. Someone is talking to him in soothing voices, hair pressed flat to their forehead, eyes like the sea.

He takes a step. And another one. And one more, until he could see Atsumu's hand shake as he grips the Dominator, see how he has to adjust because Sakusa up close is taller than he expected.

Sakusa reaches forward to curl his fingers over the cold barrel, lifting it another few inches higher until it sits directly in front of his forehead. Atsumu's bravado cracks. Among the sea of gold is shock, horror and—

"If my Crime Coefficient ever rises above 300," He promises, "You're welcome to blow me to bits."

Adrenaline. There are days where everything is wrapped up too quickly, days where he craves chasing someone so he can let himself lose control for a slight moment.

Atsumu's guard comes back up. He curls his lips up and keeps his shooting arm locked. Seconds, minutes, maybe hours pass between them before the muzzle lowers. Sakusa releases a breath he's been holding.

A shooting pain travels up his wrist and arms again. He bites his tongue to hide a groan, quickly turning around to go into the rain when Atsumu's sharp voice cuts through the rain.

"Where are you going?"

"Catching the criminal," Sakusa gives a look at his perfectly styled hair and expensive suit, "You stay under there, let the Hounds do the dirty work for you," He twists his mouth, "After all, that's what we're useful for, right?"

Sakusa leaves his charge under the warming tent, Akaashi falling into step next to him.

As soon as he feels the rain soak him, he feels much better, using his watch to bring up a hologram of the abandoned block's map. He thinks of the dark seas again, feeling his heart rate settle back to normal the pain in his right hand continues to grow.

They look so similar. 

_Obviously_ , he reminds himself bitterly, _they're twins, they should look similar._

But he wasn't prepared for the shock, the way his heart jumped in his mouth in the split second he stepped out of the van, thinking that Osamu came back and had dyed his hair blond as a prank.

Both of them stalk through the alleyways, keeping one ear on the feed. Yachi is implementing a herding situation, stationed near the start of the abandoned block of apartments as her bright blue dot glows, slowly moving away from the tent. They hide behind a dumpster, staring at the holographic map beaming out from their wristwatches to see where they can chase the target. As they talk strategy, Sakusa bites the painkillers Akaashi has on him with his molars.

"Your hand..."

"It's fine, I can shoot well with my left," Sakusa brushes off his complaints and stares at the target's psychological profile, known as the Psycho Pass, "With a Hue that dark, Sibyl might think he's unfit for society."

Yachi's voice comes out quiet through their watches, " _Yes, but we'll see what Sibyl says. Hues aren't quantitative._ "

He looks at the map, "The target is a wastewater management employee, right? He must know that the old city's sewage tunnels would be around here."

"There's one north-east of here," Akaashi tells Yachi, "I'll split up from Sakusa and herd him that way. Yachi-san, please stand by just in case. After I drive him into the corner, I'll sneak around the buildings and shoot him from higher ground if needed. Sakusa will be the main shooter."

" _Sounds good_ ," She says. Sakusa straightens and runs through the alleyways, keeping his eyes and ears peeled for stomping or a body tripping.

He picks up his pace through the abandoned block, ignoring the yells of people huddled around in a corner. Sakusa makes a face at the drug trade but ignores it, leaping past puddles and twisting his torso to shimmy through tight corners until he hears a gurgle of water.

The sewage tunnels must be near. He checks the map on his watch and sees that Akaashi is chasing the target his way, his bright blue icon moving speedily.

His hair is soaked through and he would need a shower right when he gets back to Headquarters. It's a bothersome feeling, to be wet, but he finds that he doesn't care about that, watching the latent criminal runs for the tunnels as they predicted, looking left and right and paling as Sakusa steps out.

Like a mouse, trapped.

"D-Don't come near me!" The man says, waving a metal pipe the length of a leg. Sakusa raises his left hand, shifting his eyes up to see Akaashi leaning over an overflowing apartment balcony, half covered in a random black tarp that hides his clothes, "Stay away!"

"That won't hurt me," Sakusa warns in a clear voice, "The Dominators will blow apart your pipe. Put it down."

"I don't want to be locked up!"

He tries to soothe, "There's nothing to worry about, locking people up are only for those who cannot control their Crime Coefficient from rising. A weekend or two at a rehab center and they'll clear your Hue again."

"It's been cloudy for so long and nothing's been making it clear!" The man screams, looking up pleadingly, "They'll take everything away from me! My wife, my children, my future— all Sibyl does is take and take! Only _she_ speaks the truth of the Sibyl System!"

"Your—"

"Will you sit here as a murderer and pass it off as something the system forced you to do when it's _your_ finger that pulled the trigger?! Will you leap off a cliff if Sibyl tells you to jump?"

" _Target's threat judgement has been updated. The Crime Coefficient is 303. Enforcement mode: Lethal Eliminator, please aim carefully and eliminate the target._ "

The man watches as the Dominator in Sakusa's hand shifts, before letting out a bellow of rage, sprinting towards him with the pipe up over his head.

Sakusa swallows his already dry mouth, curling a finger over the trigger. The Dominator is cool in his hands, the rosewood handle well-polished and loved. There's really nothing he can do. At least if the target's Crime Coefficient was less than 300, he could use the stun gun.

But if it's over 300 he has to shoot. Sibyl has decided that this man is not worthy of living anymore. 

Not worthy like Osamu and Iizuna?

His right hand sends him a shooting pain up his shoulders at the same time he hears someone shout.

" _NO!_ "

Sakusa stiffens, biting his tongue as his entire body seizes. He would scream if he could, but his jaws had locked. He sees Atsumu standing up from his hiding place, hidden in the opposite apartment building that Akaashi is in, horrified, the Dominator in his hands. 

The target is still running up to him, the metal bar swinging down.

_Shit_ , Sakusa thinks, before his eyes inevitably close.

" _Will you sit here as a murderer and pass it off as something the system forced you to do when it's your finger that pulled the trigger?!_ "

That's the thought that comes to mind first when Sakusa swims up from the effects of the paralyzer. The rest of his body are still stiff, but in the room where Akaashi and Yachi hovering above him with identical worried expressions, he's at least able to blink his eyes at them.

"Sakusa!" Yachi shifts as if she's ready to bury her face on his hospital gown. Akaashi must sense his plight because he pats Yachi's shoulders and keeps his hands there, "You're awake!"

His tongue is heavy in his mouth. This reminds him of getting his wisdom teeth pulled out; his face is numb, "...Happen?"

He looks down at the blanket covering him, sweating from his nightmare. He didn't kill someone, did he?

Yachi lifts her head. Her mascara is clumpy and her eyeliner runs into her dark circles, making her look like a raccoon, "You missed because you were...shot. But Akaashi eliminated him before you were hit. You don't have any broken bones."

_That's right_ , Sakusa thinks, seeing the sunrise on the horizon. From Yachi's rumpled clothing and makeup, she must have stayed in the office overnight again, something he told her to stop doing.

He snarls one word out, "Miya."

Yachi winces, sitting up as Akaashi moves his hands away from her shoulders, "Yes...I've spoken to him," She fiddles with his blankets before pulling them up even further, avoiding his glare, "He shot you because he thinks the target could've been taken into custody—"

"—Was—over," Sakusa tries, forcing his paralyzed muscles to move so he can articulate. Every twitch he manages sends him into a new world of pain. Just his luck to take a Paralyzer to the head, "Three!—"

"I know," Yachi pushes down on his shoulders. Sakusa flops back onto his hospital bed, glaring at everything in sight. A nursing drone comes into the room and stares at his vitals machine before raising a mechanical arm to adjust his drips, "You could've been injured if Akaashi didn't shoot him."

He opens his mouth about writing a formal complaint to HR when he finds words hard to make. He thinks they understand, if the gentle pats on his shoulders are anything to go by.

"Sleepy...?" He mumbles, feeling his eyes droop. The drone whirs away as he gives it a feeble glare.

Yachi and Akaashi stands, smiling down at him.

"We'll go now," Akaashi says, patting his elbow, "Rest well, Sakusa."

_Don't leave_ , he tries to say before he loses consciousness, thinking of Osamu standing underneath the tent with Iizuna next to him, both of them holding Dominators and smiling at him.

"What the fuck is this."

He stares at the paperwork from HR and several more left on his computer station, looking up to see Akaashi sigh. He spins around in his chair.

"Miya-kun filed a complaint about the way you handled that case."

Sakusa suddenly has an urge to throw something over his shoulder.

"Yachi told him off, Chief said you were only doing your job and saw nothing in the way you conducted yourself that crosses the line, so that piece of paper is, essentially, junk. But you still have a copy," Akaashi concludes, "How's your face?"

"Better now that I can feel the rest of my face," He snaps, sitting down and trying to organize his desk. First shift back and it looked like a paper tornado touched down, "Anything I missed?"

"I'll wait until you finish typing your report."

Sakusa raises an eyebrow at that, but Akaashi goes back to scrolling through the internet.

He jiggles his computer awake and pulls up an empty report template, filling in the necessary information before starting to type. He leaves unnecessary details out, getting into the zone of typing and hearing the typesetter audio clicking throughout the bullpen. 

He sends the report off, the file now completed and buried into wherever Sibyl's core is, just like the many latent criminals Sakusa has brought to justice in the past.

"Done," He looks up, "Now tell me what's going on."

Akaashi gestures for him to walk to his station. Sakusa pushes with his legs, sliding his chair over and watching a feed from an audio capturing system, most likely from the comms device they were all linked to.

Akaashi presses a button.

" _—It's been cloudy for so long and nothing's been making it clear! They'll take everything away from me! My wife, my children, my future— all Sibyl does is take and take! Only she speaks the truth of the Sibyl System!_ "

The audio stops with a press of his fingers. Akaashi turns to him, frowning, "Did you hear it?"

"' _Only she speaks the truth of the Sibyl System,_ "' Sakusa repeats, "I did catch that when he spoke to me."

Akaashi is silent, "You don't think it's...that, do you?"

"I don't know. And personally, it's too soon to say," Sakusa rolls himself back to his station, opening his emails. 

Everything changes.

Dropped in casual conversations in the bullpen, Atsumu's nonchalant nicknames of ' _hey dog_ ' or ' _scrub_ ' graces his ears. His second day back investigating and there were no apologies directed his way. It's within an Inspector's rights to shoot their Enforcers if their Crime Coefficient gets too high.

Sakusa doesn't fight it. He is a dog who takes orders from the greatest achievement humanity has ever accomplished, to put their trust in a system that can calculate the risk of someone's criminal acts. He's a professional, he does his duties with a clear head and avoids Atsumu at all costs, only to hold the seams of his Division before it splits again, pushing Akaashi back whenever Atsumu's remarks rile him up as well.

If Atsumu slaps papers out of his hands, Sakusa bends down to pick it up. If Atsumu pours coffee (decently warm to make him uncomfortable, not hot enough to scald) on his head, he tugs at his desk drawers and goes off to the bathroom with a spare shirt. If Atsumu sneers at him at the hallways or any public spaces, he looks away or pretends he has something to do.

If Komori died by his hand, Sakusa would be furious too. Akaashi and Yachi pulls him aside, asking if he wants them to intervene on his behalf. He denies them, brushing it off.

"But!—"

He cuts Yachi off, a hand already on the door of the interrogation room they took over to hide in. His voice is cold and clipped, "Have you ever thought that I deserve it?"

"...Never," He hears her mumble, just before the door slams to a shut behind him. And he stays outside the door for a long time, wondering if Yachi hadn't had her mind changed. Did she think Osamu and Iizuna were like those myths of latent criminals they grew up hearing?

And if Atsumu points the Dominator at him on the field, Sakusa stands still, watching his blue eyes burn when the Dominator locks itself into Paralyzer mode. Still useful to society, not yet worthless.

"Were you going to shoot him?"

Sakusa looks up. The office is empty. He frowns, looking at the time and realizing he'd been too engrossed by his work as Atsumu leans against the only exit, spinning his car keys. It's past five on a Friday and he knows Atsumu has a 'hot dinner date' he has to go to, the news announced to Yachi when they all had gotten back from lunch.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I'm asking you something here."

Sakusa looks away, wishing he could be anywhere else. His mind races with questions and feelings, all ranging from why Atsumu had left his high ranking position with the Ministry of Technology to pursue law enforcement to resigned hopelessness that Osamu's brother's is only here in the name of revenge.

"Who?" They've been attending to lots of cases recently. All latent criminals tend to blur into one another.

"The guy in the sewage alley."

Sakusa looks at his keyboard and desk. It's clean, papers filed away neatly in folders and his cold mug of coffee sitting nearby. Did Atsumu shoot Sakusa because he thought Sakusa was going to kill the man?

"Sibyl decided that the man is not worthy of living anymore," He makes his voice flat, hearing Atsumu's footsteps click on the floors and tensing up, "He was holding a metal bat, I was concerned about my safety and—"

A fist connects with the side of his head. Sakusa doesn't fight back, head turned to the right and looking at Yachi's and Atsumu's empty desk at the end of the room, monitors shut off, desks clean. His cheek and nose aches.

A hand pulls on his tie. Sakusa turns, feeling his nose run as Atsumu's gold eyes burns, looking every bit like Osamu for the exception of his hair.

"Is that what you thought when you killed him?" Atsumu rasps, "When you kill other latent criminals? When my brother supposedly went rogue?"

Does Atsumu know the truth? He doesn't think so, the case that killed Osamu and Iizuna is restricted even to him and Yachi. Sibyl is still investigating it to this day, but he thinks they've given up and swept it under the rug, a failure in their books, never publicized to the public.

It didn't used to be like this supposedly. In Sakusa's grandmother's time, the court system was still used to sentence criminals. When Sibyl was introduced to judge and weigh people's criminality, rioters took to the streets. How can you lock up people who had high Crime Coefficients who had never done anything?

How can a number determine your social standing, value and right to live?

But the benefits of such system outweighed the consequences. Streets became safer, people were satisfied with the results of job aptitude tests and Sibyl's matchmaking skills. Happiness in the population rose. 

Crimes went down, yet cases like latent criminals appearing still happens day to day. No system is perfect.

Water drips onto his face. Sakusa jerks his eyes back up to see Atsumu's eyes swimming in tears, more landing on his cheeks as Sakusa stares, open-mouthed.

A trickle of blood from his bleeding nose enters his mouth, tasting like salt and something metallic. The death grip Atsumu has on Sakusa's tie loosens as he starts shaking, his throat making odd clicking sounds. Atsumu sobs something too convoluted for him to make out before Sakusa forces his muscles to move, reaching for his elbows to comfort— to do something.

"Miya—"

Atsumu runs, nearly bashing head-first into the automatic doors. He disappears.

Sakusa watches the door close, feeling the wetness on his cheeks slip down. He fumbles with his desk drawers, pulling out an anti-bruising cream and smearing it all over the left side of his cheek until the ache recedes.

It's as if he never cried in front of him.

Sakusa doesn't fuss. He takes over shifts, Yachi and Atsumu alternating as his supervisor. Sometimes, their days align and all four of them— Yachi, Atsumu, Akaashi and he— will be present on a case, working together. 

Atsumu fought him every twist and turn of the way when it came to cases, opposing every plan Sakusa came up with. Even if it's illogical, even if Yachi tries to reign him in, he raises a fuss. His outbursts of anger became the norm in the office.

Sometimes, Sakusa would catch him slip, a mask falling for a brief second, watching Atsumu stare off into space.

Once you look past the anger and hurt and bitterness, he's just a boy who lost his twin.

Atsumu continues to pretend he doesn't exist one day and hiss profanities at him the next. _Scrub, good for nothing Enforcer, dog, you_. Sakusa ignores it when Atsumu steps on his shoes, destroying the shine, or when he knocks into his shoulders, the stack of documents falling on the ground.

"You might be trash, but you can do your job well, huh?" Atsumu says, chuckling lowly. Sakusa lowers his fists, sharply dodging back to avoid a hook kick before sweeping his legs beneath Atsumu and watching him fall hard.

This is another form of payment.

Atsumu shoots him a manic grin behind his mouth guard. Sakusa flips him over his shoulder, pinning him to the ground before letting go. His nose is full of his expensive cologne— one recommended to him by Sibyl of course. It's odd. The cologne mixed with sweat should disgust him but it doesn't.

His hands burn whenever they touch. If Atsumu notices, he doesn't make any comments, wheezing on the mat as his chest comes up and down quickly. Sakusa, for a split second, wants to apologize for flipping him too hard, but decides against it.

Sakusa watches Atsumu sit up to catch his breath. Does being around him raise his Crime Coefficient?

"What are your looking at?" Atsumu asks. The usual venom in his voice is absent, but Sakusa thinks that's mostly because of his flushed state.

He jerks his head down, "Nothing."

If he could turn back time and go back, he would.

When Sakusa wakes up at night, feeling his right hand on fire, he stumbles to his bathroom, entering the shower cubicle with his clothes on and ordering the water to start.

He watches the water swirl down the drain when he blinks the nightmares away, tears trailing down his face, lost among the other droplets. He orders his shower to stop the water, shivering as he hugs himself tightly.

When he and Akaashi arrive at the cafeteria, they both look at each other's matching red-rimmed gazes with a wary smile. It's October 5th, after all. Sakusa pulls out a pen and paper from his pockets and starts scribbling, a relaxation technique recommended by his counselor after Osamu's death as they spend breakfast in silence.

For what today represents, it's normal enough. They inspect a drone factory, write reports and answer to a traffic incident in Chiba Ward since the two people in the traffic department are on vacation and they're short staffed. Atsumu tells Yachi about the match Sibyl recommended him, saying that his date last night ended well.

Sakusa does his work quietly and clocks off. He remembers belatedly that he was supposed to return Yachi's USB file, walking back to the elevators and stabbing the number for the CID.

He hears it when he outside Division One's dark bullpen.

Someone's crying. The date is October 5th.

It's pathetic to see Atsumu with a bottle of hard liquor next to him, tears rolling down his cheeks. His eyes are puffy and unfocused, from alcohol or crying, Sakusa doesn't know, but his cheeks are also flushed.

He tips his whiskey glass, the amber swishing from side to side, watching it.

_Osamu_ , his heart twists, thinking of his dream earlier this morning, _Osamu, Osamu where are you?_

Atsumu catches sight of him, his hand stopping. Sakusa considers walking backwards and away, but Atsumu is already staggering up, the automatic doors parting for him as he sinks his fingers into Sakusa's shirt. 

He pulls him down by his tie, eyelashes clumping.

"Bring my brother back," He whispers. Sakusa steadies him, the USB burning in his pocket, "Bring Samu back. You're a dog, aren't you? Bring him back."

"I—"

"I shouldn't care 'bout a good for nothing latent criminal, even if he is my brother," Atsumu laughs. He nearly tips over to one side and Sakusa yanks him back up before both of them goes down, "If Sibyl's written him off as good as dead, good as _worthless_ , someone who doesn't even deserve to _live_ , I shouldn't be upset, but I still am, why am I upset?" One hand uncurls and forms a loose fist, hitting Sakusa's chest, "Why am I upset?"

Another hit, like a kitten's paw, to his chest, "Do I even have the right to be upset?"

Sakusa looks at the furrow between his brows, at the hand Atsumu has on his tie, "Miya."

More tears roll down as he slurs, "I hate tha' name. I'm the only Miya now. No one will mistake me for my brother."

"Miya."

"I'm bad, I know, but bring Samu back," He whispers, staring beseechingly at him, "Bring my baby brother back, Sakusa."

Sakusa stares at his wet eyes, his clumping eyelashes, his dry lips, before being filled with a warm feeling of wanting to protect.

Then Atsumu's head tilts backwards and Sakusa jerks him to his chest, nearly falling down. When shaking him doesn't wake him up, Sakusa hoists him up in a princess carry and looks down in alarm that hives are starting to appear on his skin, running for medical bay.

After a nursing drone administers antihistamines for the allergic reaction and takes a sample of blood to run, Sakusa stays by his side, surrounded by the scent of hospital linen and whatever cleaners they use in here.

Atsumu looks younger, much like the first time Sakusa met Osamu two years ago, when they were both new on the force. Sakusa tugs mindlessly at his blankets, adjusting them just so his fingers has something to do while he swallows the ball in his throat.

Someone clears their throat.

Akaashi and Komori hover at the door.

His cousin holds up a set of green bottles. Akaashi is holding a package of wax candles in his hands. Sakusa nods at them and gestures to the sleeping man breathing peacefully. Akaashi mouths, ' _my room_ ', before tugging Komori out of sight.

Tonight, he will sit vigil with the remnants of the old Division One for Osamu and Iizuna. Because they're not allowed freedom, Sakusa, Akaashi and Komori can't step outside the PSB's Headquarters without Inspectors on duty pointing their guns at them.

So this is their way of paying respect. Iizuna's favorite lemon sours and a cake for Osamu. Iizuna never told them when his birthday was, so they always celebrated it with Osamu's. 

They would be twenty-five and twenty-six today.

Atsumu croaks, his puffy eyelids from the combination of crying and his allergic reaction opening, staring unseeingly at him, "Samu?"

Sakusa feels a ball form in his throat. He watches as Atsumu's hands stretch, curling around Sakusa's left hand that's tightly gripping the blankets. He tries to yank his hand back, but Atsumu holds onto it tightly, callouses rough. Hadn't Osamu mentioned that Atsumu worked at the Ministry of Technology as a senior systems engineer a long, long time ago?

"Samu?" Atsumu tries again, squinting.

The memory of sitting in a car with Osamu beside him comes too easily. Sakusa smooths Atsumu's hair, feeling a wax finish from his pomade over his fingers. He tries his best impersonation at Osamu's voice.

"Go back to sleep, Tsumu."

Atsumu shuts his eyes and loosen his hand, "'Kay."

Sakusa stands, adjusts the blankets on Atsumu one last time and hovers. He thinks about apologizing to his sleeping form, but what can apologies do? 

They won't bring back his brother or Sakusa would have done that a long time ago.

He exits the room.

On the table next to Atsumu is the bottle of whiskey he left in the office, half-empty.

The next time Sakusa sees Atsumu, both of them coming in for an overnight shift, he's wearing an expensive looking three piece suit. By the cut and how it hugs his shoulders, it must also be tailored. Did he come back from a date?

Atsumu doesn't say anything to him, heading to his desk in the back as Sakusa shakes his computer awake and pulls up a traffic cameras, letting it run in one of his many monitors. Nights are a coin toss. It's either completely dead and Sakusa struggles not to fall asleep or he's running solely on adrenaline as he chases criminals down. 

He doesn't look in Atsumu's direction and pretends to be engrossed in one of the cameras stationed in Shibuya Crossing.

A clearing of a throat. Sakusa turns his head reluctantly, looking up to see Atsumu hover near him, not making eye contact.

There's a cup of coffee from one of the vending machines in the hallway in his hand. It's held away from his body, the handle turned towards him.

Sakusa doesn't say, _are you going to spill that all over me like you've had been doing the past month?_ Sometimes, it's easier when he doesn't say anything.

He takes it, feeling his fingertips immediately burn before the scent that wafts out registers.

It's a French vanilla roast, one that he favors. He stares at his reflection swimming on the surface. Vague eyes, a tired mouth, his bangs held in place with hair product.

He doesn't say thank you.

Atsumu walks back to his desk and doesn't look in his direction for the rest of the night. Sakusa stares at the traffic cameras and thinks about losing people and making amends.

"The victim is a surgery resident, twenty-seven year old female, Akai Shiho."

Sakusa closes his eyes. Perhaps if he doesn't see the hologram in front of him, a meteor will fall out of the sky and destroy the entire planet, taking him along. 

"Her body was found in the OR where she'd been using VR technology to simulate cardiac bypass surgery for practice. The software malfunctioned and attacked her instead."

For all the times he and Atsumu were on duty on off-shifts, they've lucked out never had to solve a case on their own. It figures though, that Lady Luck never smiled down on Sakusa.

"It's hard to hack into robots once they're signed and shipped out of the factory so it's most likely an accident," Atsumu finishes summarizing, yawning and stretching, having taken over a meeting room. His maroon dress shirt rises up.

Sakusa doubts it's an accident, thumbing over the handle of the Dominator stashed in the pocket of his knee length peacoat. Atsumu had led him to speak to the doctors of the cardiac team earlier. The person who found the body had to join an emergency surgery with the trauma team and is currently unavailable.

Atsumu sprawls over one of the cushy chairs as Sakusa stands stiffly at the door.

"Are you going to talk or will you let me do all the work?"

"It's not an accident, it's a murder."

Atsumu looks away from where he'd been staring at the projection on the wall, a profile of every employee who worked today, "Everyone had a Psycho Pass scan done. While their Hues clouded slightly, nothing out of the norm jumps out at me."

"Scanners can be tricked with medication."

"Those are regulated," Atsumu argues. "How did the software rewrite itself them? It's impossible for a layman to crack open the security and encryption, they're made so that no one can alter the settings."

"That's what I'd like to ask her," Sakusa watches as Atsumu's face sours.

"Take my advice as a former senior systems engineer," Atsumu says in a patronizing tone, crossing his arms, "And believe me when I tell you that it's unbelievably hard to hack into these programs. Even I would need two weeks to break it and I'm a professional. What makes you think any normal person can do this?"

Nothing, if he were to follow logic, but his gut tells him something else.

Sakusa raises his left hand, tapping away on his wristwatch. The projection on the wall changes with his fingers, "She has the means to do it."

He pulls up a resume of Kisaragi Midori's experiences, "It says here she's currently researching the efficacy of high blood pressure drugs. Two years earlier, she was involved in a study with the OW Pharmaceutical Group on beta-blockers. A background in pharmacology like this and I'm sure she can make her own Hue regulators."

"That's saying that you could also be the killer because _you_ have the killing instincts of a dog."

"She has a motive too. Only two cardiac residents are accepted in this hospital once they finish and there are 5 currently. She could be picking them off one by one to guarantee a position here."

"That's a lot of extrapolating."

"There's a way to know if she's the killer instantly."

Atsumu's black, unbleached caterpillar eyebrows rise, "Yeah?" He mocks, "What is it?"

Sakusa pulls out the Dominator in his pocket.

"If she faked her Hue just before she discovered the body, of course she would pass the scanners," He checks the hologram clock on the wall, "She's in surgery now, she hasn't been able to take her medications and I'm sure she wasn't expecting to be dragged into an emergency case. The Dominator will show her Crime Coefficient, we'll allow Sibyl to judge her."

"But—"

"Even the simplest criminal thoughts such as taking a medication to cover up a clouded Hue will get flagged, Miya-san," Sakusa tells the floor, "It's been proven to be accurate time and time again. If she's not guilty, the number shouldn't be higher than one hundred. Sibyl cannot be tricked with Hue medication."

Atsumu gives him an unreadable look. His mouth is relaxed, but his eyes are tight.

Sakusa looks away.

He's probably wondering if _he_ tricked Sibyl.

Atsumu sighs, voice tight, "Fine, let's go with your plan."

Sakusa gladly takes the order, unlocking the door. Atsumu follows him like a shadow as they ask cardiac team for directions to the OR department, where the hallway is empty and a set of double automatic doors separate the area where staff and patients can be in.

He peeks a look at Atsumu. He looks faraway again. Distant and troubled.

Sakusa looks down at his gloved hands, tugging on the leather out of habit. The cardiac team said the surgery should be wrapping up soon if they want to intercept her and pull her aside for questioning.

_Everyone should be treated innocent until proven guilty._

His grandmother used to say that to him, always frowning when they would pass by a cruiser when Sakusa was young and they drove him to a park.

What a backwards way of thinking. 

That's what he would've thought too, if this is the twenty-two year old version of him hearing those words. As it is, Sakusa has lost two people close to him and is alone for the exception of Komori, Akaashi and Yachi in this world.

He pulls the Dominator out of his pocket slightly, just enough to see Sibyl's sign painted onto the side of the gun. He can't imagine a world without Sibyl.

But he thinks about Osamu and Iizuna and he feels sick. Is it right to lock people up with high Crime Coefficients even if they haven't done anything, only allowing them to venture out as Enforcers and nothing more? Does having the potential to commit a crime automatically grant society to toss you away? What did they do in their last moments before Sibyl judged them as worthless?

And how terrible, for Atsumu, someone on the fast track to success, to derail his entire life just for the sole reason to get to the bottom of this.

Sakusa could go back to the mental care center, but that feels like running away.

If anything, he should try to use the lessons Iizuna and Osamu imparted to him, even if he's a tiny, insignificant cog in the grand scheme of things.

Even if he could barely make a difference as an Enforcer.

"Oh," A female voice interrupts his thoughts. Sakusa jerks his head around, spotting Kisaragi Midori in light blue scrubs and a surgical hat hiding her hair, blinking at them. "Are you families of the patient?"

Atsumu raises his right hand up, his badge appearing, "We're with the Ministry of Welfare, Crime Investigation Department. Could we have a few minutes of your time for questioning?"

Her expression shifts. A small pink tongue darts out and her eyes flick from Atsumu to the end of the hallway.

She bolts.

Sakusa gives chase without prompt, Atsumu yelling behind him.

"H-Hey!"

Kisaragi is a fast runner. Sakusa has longer legs though, and he watches as she runs down an escalator, waiting for a few seconds as Atsumu catches up to him. The lobby is empty. How fortunate. He looks at the escalator and at the lobby floor, thinking.

"Sakusa!"

He ignores the call, pulling his Dominator out. He swings his legs past the railings with Atsumu yelling ' _what the hell do you think you're doing?!_ ', falling in the air before landing in a crouch.

His ankles sting. 

Kisaragi nearly trips, coming to a screeching halt just in front of him as he aims the Dominator at her head.

" _Crime Coefficient is 352. Enforcement mode: Lethal Eliminator,_ " Sibyl says to him, the gun shifting, " _Please aim carefully and eliminate the target._ "

Then he catches a wink of silver in her hands, ducking just in time to avoid the scalpel slashing towards his eyes. He grabs the weapon with his right hand, wrestling it out and tossing it behind his shoulders, metal clattering.

He crumples slightly when she knees him in the groin, shifting just so that her knee barely nicks him. But the split second of his concentration lapsed and she pulls out a switchblade out of her pocket, spotting the blond on the second floor story, looking down at them.

"Stop!" He roars, sprinting after her. She scrambles away, arms wind-milling, stumbling, palms catching the escalator steps. He grabs her long ponytail and yanks, both of them tumbling down. 

She thrashes, screaming, the blade spinning and coming to a stop at Atsumu's feet.

"Point it at her!" Sakusa orders, trying to keep her still. He's heaving from sprinting, "Point the Dominator at her!"

He doesn't expect Atsumu to follow him, but he brings the muzzle of the Dominator up, shaking as his eyes turns blue.

Then Sakusa watches as the Dominator shifts. Not into Lethal Eliminator like it did for him, but into Destroy Decomposer. He looks down, realizing what the large scrub shirt is hiding.

She grins, a necklace between her teeth that looks like a button.

"Long live Cassandra," She whispers.

Sakusa leaps off and tackles Atsumu down as the bomb detonates. They're pushed away by the blast, the explosion deafening everything. He feels himself slam into a wall, curling his arms tighter around him as colors burst in front of his closed eyes.

He falls. Cracks reverb around them. He pulls Atsumu tighter to him, something crashing nearby. His head hurts.

When his ears stop ringing, he opens his eyes to slits, seeing the air heavy with rubble and dust. He looks down to see Atsumu safely curled up in his arms, dirty and scared. His ears start to ring again.

It takes Sakusa too long to realize that the ringing in his ears is from his wristwatch. He makes a gesture to accept it, wincing when his chest twinges, hearing Yachi shriek.

" _Sakusa? Sakusa? Are you alright? I just woke up with reports that the hospital you're in blew up! Atsumu-kun's not answer his watch and!_ —"

"He's with me," He coughs. He aches all over. He's pretty sure there's a large slab of drywall pinning his legs down. He kicks it off successfully, hearing a thud.

" _Stay down! We'll be there soon! Okay? Stay still, we'll send drones after you!_ " Yachi hysterically orders, hanging up.

Sakusa coughs some more, letting his wrist flop on the ground. He looks down to see that there's not a scratch on Atsumu thanks to his quick reflexes, "Are you alright?"

Atsumu can only manage a nod, eyes large and scared. Sakusa flexes all his limbs. They're all attached at least, which is surprising because they were so close to the blast source.

He feels something wet trail down his forehead, feeling the cool stone floor press against his temples.

He doesn't realize his eyelids have fluttered shut until hands are shaking him, Atsumu's voice urgent and low, "Sakusa. Hey, Sakusa—" He sounds close to tears, "Sakusa!"

"Just resting," He gasps, hissing. Atsumu stills, his elbow brushing a rib. Great, it's probably fractured or broken. With all the dust on him, the tear tracks on his cheeks are more than obvious, "You're not injured, right?"

"No..."

He looks at the way they're curled up into each other, "I know it's uncomfortable, but I don't know if the floors are stable enough for us to move around, let's stay here—"

He stops. Atsumu blinks at him, touching his forehead and applying pressure.

"It's bleeding."

"Head sounds usually look worse than they are, I'm fine—"

"I'm still putting pressure," Atsumu snaps, "Shut up."

He opens his mouth to argue when Atsumu cuts him off, "That's an order!"

"Bossy," He can't help but sneak, sliding his eyes shut as he hears the wail of sirens coming their way. Atsumu tells him to save his breath and not a moment too soon, they hear Yachi's and Akaashi's panicked yells in the lobby below them as Atsumu communicates with them through Sakusa's watch.

When he wakes up one morning with blankets snugly pulled to his neck, there's coffee in a self-warming mug at his bedside. It smells like French vanilla.

"You didn't bring that to me, did you?" He says when Komori strolls in carrying a lunch tray he stole from a nursing drone. The mug is empty. It's been several hours since he finished the cup, staring at the walls around him and wishing a drone would part the blinds so he can see outside

Komori shakes his head, taking his heat next to Sakusa and punching the buttons on the bed so it pulls him up into a sitting position, "No, why?"

"Nothing."

"You scared me, Kiyoomi," Komori starts, his lips doing a funny, twitchy thing when he's trying not to show how upset he is, "Or well, Yachi made it sound like you were on death's door. Your ribs are nearly healed, right?"

Sakusa's injury is summed up to a total of four fractured ribs which were set with little nanorobots they injected near the site of injury to heal the wound as fast as they can, a superficial head laceration which was stitched and blood loss that's fixed when they pump two bags of blood in him.

That and he looks like a bruised fruit, purples and greens dotting nearly every inch of skin. Komori says he looks dashing. Sakusa tells him to stop talking out of his ass, pointing the spoon of his pudding cup at his Cheshire grin.

After catching up Sakusa up to what Division One has gotten up to in his absence and his ongoing research into who Cassandra is, Komori's bravado slowly slips. He shuffles sideways so his cousin can climb onto the hospital bed with him and they lie there together, Sakusa holding a box of tissues.

"Remember when we used to go cliff-jumping in the summer?"

"Our mothers nearly killed us," Sakusa laughs. Komori blows his nose like a trumpet.

It's overcast today. October has rolled into November. There are already fairy lights strung around the city, something glittery and pretty to make the dreary cold months slightly better. From his room in medical bay, he can see other office workers lounge on rooftop gardens, huddled, smoke trailing up, smiling and laughing.

He was once like that. Free. Free to go in and out.

He didn't realize he'd say that part out loud, Komori replying, "You can still go back."

Sakusa turns his head, frowning, "What?"

"There's one record," His cousin starts, the red in his eyes nearly gone, "Of an Enforcer being released to society when their Crime Coefficient lowered enough. Only one, but one is enough for hope, isn't it?"

Sakusa fiddles with the tissue box. He thinks about reading the books in his parent's bookshelves when he was still young, thinking of the titan Atlas, condemned to hold the weight of the sky for all eternity. 

The door opens. Akaashi, Yachi and Atsumu appear with their lunch trays. Sakusa ignores the faces of his team and zones in immediately onto Atsumu.

Shock blooms on his face. Fury, then blank, like the deep sea. Sakusa is perplexed, sitting up and hissing painfully when Akaashi panics and stabs a button for a nursing drone to come. Sakusa waves him and the nursing drone off from giving him more painkillers, knowing that it's easy to get addicted to the drugs in this century. The argument leaves him tired and when he looks up, Atsumu is gone.

Sakusa chats with his team. When Akaashi catches on that he's starting to sway, they quickly leave and tell him to rest up.

It starts raining, droplets of water decorating the glass, his hands itching for paint. He wonders why Atsumu had run away earlier. 

Sakusa falls asleep to the beeping of his vitals monitor and the pitter patter outside, drifting. He dreams about nonsensical things, like diving for pearls, receiving a blue rose, skating while holding someone in his arms, and watching Iizuna buy him a hot drink from a vending machine.

It's night time when he flutters his eyes open, remembering that in the last sequence, he was on a stage, playing something when the violin string snapped and cut his cheek.

It's an odd sequences of dreams, but it's nice at least, to be immersed in a life where he isn't a dog following orders to kill.

Even if they're temporary.

There's something very interesting he finds out over his hospital stay.

When he's awake and blinking, the occasional nursing drone would visit him periodically every hour, bringing medication, salve for his forehead and meals or drinks. If it's not the nursing drone, it's Yachi bringing him a cup of subpar coffee from the vending machines, his cousin hiding in his hospital room to take a nap or Akaashi sitting down with him, a book in hand.

If he pretends to be asleep, Atsumu would enter the room and do nothing more than sit on the chair next to his bed, like he's guarding him.

The few times Sakusa slits his eyes open to peek, Atsumu is staring at his blankets with a tortured expression. If he makes the slightest movement, Atsumu tenses like he's ready to bolt out the door.

So he learns to lie still, wondering why he's forcing himself to act like he's asleep, why Atsumu just sits in his room and says nothing.

Then one day, when there's a rain and windstorm outside, he hears it. A voice of a man who realized he's been lied to his entire life.

"You didn't kill him, did you?"

When they inspect an incident at a drone factory, taking over a meeting room, Sakusa is surprised when his declaration of the incident being a murder doesn't incite any outbursts.

"I agree," Atsumu says quietly, staring up at the projection of the staff and their daily Hue reports. Greens, blues, purples, yellows and pinks reflect off his skin and white dress shirt. He's in a maroon suit today, the purples of his eye bags too apparent, "Seems too suspicious."

All three of them share glances with each other. Then Yachi nods and claps her hand, ordering Atsumu to flag any suspicious profiles. The day ends with Akaashi and Sakusa tag-teaming to destroy an attack drone and Atsumu shooting their suspect.

Sakusa makes eye contact with him. Atsumu looks away first, scratching his ear and trying to make plans with Yachi after work for ramen near a train station not far from Headquarters. Yachi agrees and wonders if he's okay if Kiyoko from Division Two joins them.

Sakusa goes home and dreams of sitting in a boat, watching the ocean.

They're all buttoning their coats, ready to put on their holo-suits and walk disguised among the crowd for the robot festival in Shibuya when they get a case. They hand off the parade instructions to Division Two and floor it.

"Another suicidal bomber," Yachi mumbles, eyes wary.

Sakusa and Akaashi give each other looks, thinking of the exact same thing. Once is nothing. Two could be a coincidence.

They find the killer, but not before he accused them all of being mindless citizens. There are drones floating around them, Atsumu furiously tapping on a laptop back in the paddy wagon, trying to disable the city wide program, as the bomber finishes his spiel about the truth.

There are stakes on the line. He has to bring the bomber back alive so they can interrogate him, but Yachi and Akaashi doesn't have a clear shot, hidden in the back.

"Long live Cassandra!"

And Sakusa ducks, dust and gravel raining down.

The truth. What is the truth? 

Yachi orders all of them into the police cruisers (she and Atsumu took one each) to treat them to dinner in an actual restaurant with people instead of an automated kitchen and robot servers to perk their mood up.

"You don't want to go?" She looks at him, killing the electrical engine. Outside, Atsumu and Akaashi are already making their way up to the restaurant, the telltale blue Inspector coat absent from Atsumu's shoulders.

He watches the two figures for a bit, seeing Akaashi smile slightly while they wait at the door. A hostess is sticking her head out, mouth opening and closing as she turns her head to survey the restaurant for tables that can fit them.

"It doesn't feel like we deserve it."

"It's not about deserving anything," Yachi tells him, locking the wheel and turning the alarm system on, "Come on."

"You don't need to be kind to me, Yachi."

She doesn't reply, slamming the car door in his face before walking around and tugging him out.

Sakusa hasn't been in a restaurant for half a year now, hanging his suit jacket on the wall hook and pulling his tie loose to pop the first two buttons off. He looks around, drinking at the sight of people in business casual clothing laughing uproariously, kids bouncing in their seat, a couple splitting two dishes with each other. 

The waiter who drops food off gives them a charming smile. Sakusa sees a napkin with a number scribbled being placed down along with his plate that he ignores, knowing that he'll be ghosted when he reveals his occupation.

Yachi dances out of the restaurant for a bit, all of them telling her to set the car to auto mode. She chirps an okay and the next thing Sakusa knows, Komori is head-locking him, smelling like cigarette smoke and soap, ruffling his hair.

"Let me catch up," Komori laughs, before waving the bottles of warm sake away as Atsumu shoves it in front of his face, "Whoa, not like that!"

"Come on, you were so gung-ho about drinking a couple of seconds ago!"

"Even Sakusa's drinking," Akaashi says with a quirk of his mouth.

Komori turns, watches him sip his half-empty glass of lemon sour and grins. Sakusa smiles back at him, the warm feeling in his chest radiating outwards, catching Atsumu's eyes in his direction.

And the noise of the restaurant— the cooks running around in the kitchen, the cleaning robots picking up crumbs on the floor, the gentle whir of the heating unit above them, the hostess' voice leading people to tables far away from them— melts away a little. 

And Sakusa realizes that the virgin margarita in Atsumu's glass is the exact same shade as his eyes. The weird light hanging down— an Edison lightbulb on a wire— should be harsh but it casts a soft glow on the pink across his cheeks. His hair is fluffy and just the right tone of brassy that makes Sakusa want to lean forward.

Instead he ducks his head and clutches the wood of his chair until splinters poke at his nailbeds. He pulls them away, confused at why they're red, as Yachi flails and plucks bandaids from her wallet.

"Sakusa! What happened?"

Her words falls on deaf ears as she squeezes antibacterial gel all over his fingers.

Sakusa doesn't look at Atsumu for the rest of the night. 

When he collapses in his bed, too drunk to take a shower, he falls asleep dreaming of swimming in a pool the color of honey.

A tray carrying an udon seafood set and a mug of tea slams down on his table.

Yachi is in medical bay getting the knot in her shoulder looked at with Akaashi keeping her company. Komori is assisting Division Two in a case and had told him he's unable to eat lunch together.

Sakusa looks up to see Atsumu claim the seat in front of him. It's the New Year. He'd gotten his hair toned, the brassy color less noticeable, "Teach me."

"What."

"Teach me," Atsumu repeats, avoiding his eyes and speaking to the tray, "Teach me how to be a good inspector."

"No."

Sakusa starts walking away to another part of the cafeteria before a hand shoots out and grabs his right arm.

Sakusa gives him an unimpressed glance. Atsumu glares back at him. They're both too prideful to elaborate— Atsumu is still acting tough and Sakusa is decidedly trying not to draw anymore eyes towards him.

He lowers his tray and sighs. The arm vanishes. Sakusa races for the elevators as Atsumu makes a noise behind him.

"Hey! Cheater!"

Sakusa decides to stop on the twentieth floor instead, knowing that there's a garden area with a good view of the city. He rarely eats outside during the winter but he does so now, finding a bench and placing his tray across his lap, thinking of a different time when the sun was high above his head and someone with grey hair smiled at him.

He should've brought his coat though. It's freezing.

"Found you."

Sakusa sighs, watching Atsumu dance into view. He has his winter coat over his shoulders and Sakusa's peacoat draped over his arm.

"Shove over, won't you? Who designed these benches anyway," Atsumu chats as if they're long time best friends, "They're so stiff and uncomfortable. Thought with the technology today, you can have these seats pre-warmed."

"You can go back inside where it's warm," Look at him talking to Atsumu. Yachi would be tearing up at the show of a harmonious Inspector-Enforcer relationship if she's around.

"I got a question for you first," Atsumu says, taking his bowl of udon towards his mouth as he blows. A cloud of steam masks his features temporarily, "How are you so good at cases?"

"I hope I would be considering it's my _job_."

"You're so damn prickly. I mean, how..." Atsumu furrows his brows, staring at the green onions floating in his broth. His voice becomes softer, the sharp edge missing, "How can you figure it out so quickly? The first case I got, I heard you through the comms, you all knew where he was going to go. And at the hospital, you know it was the Kisaragi girl."

He shrugs.

Atsumu waits.

He raises his left hand up where his watch is, tapping on the screen so he could use the warming function of his jacket, "I pretend like I'm the criminal and think what I would do to escape in their situation."

Actions are predictable when criminals are pressed in a corner, "Once you see more cases you notice a pattern forming. Someone's testimony is off, you have a gut-feeling that something's hidden, or they're lying due to their tics."

"Can you teach me all of that? To notice the tics, or—"

"No."

Atsumu protests, "But I'll just be dragging everyone down! How am I supposed to be an inspector like this?"

Sakusa turns to him, standing. Snow falls from the grey skies, a snowflake landing on Atsumu's overly long lashes, his expression of childish earnestness. Did Sakusa look like that when he started out? He must have.

"Look, Miya," Sakusa softens his tone, "Leave the criminal chasing and thinking to the Enforcers. Your job is to remain calm on the field and watch over us. Don't make it harder for yourself, you'll climb the ladder if you keep your head steady."

"You're not listening to me! I don't want to be a—"

"A deadweight Inspector is better than an Inspector who gets demoted to an Enforcer," Sakusa raises his voice, looking into his eyes. It really is like drowning in a pool of honey, just like his dream. He whispers, "I would know."

Atsumu blinks, once, twice, before he opens his mouth and Sakusa cuts him off, sweeping his tray from the bench, "I'm going back inside. Don't follow me."

_Don't follow my footsteps_ , goes unsaid. 

That night, in the dormitory that is also his cage, Sakusa chooses to do something stupid and forego his combination of Prazonin, Trazodone and cyproheptadine, sinking immediately into nightmares.

He and Akaashi were sitting in a restaurant with Iizuna and Osamu. He'd dragged Komori out of the lab. The alcohol poured freely and they were laughing. 

It was terrible, to relive the dead in his life when he couldn't do anything other than watch hopelessly, longing to stare at their faces longer, to hear their voices again.

He watched as Osamu and Iizuna started to spend more time together, speaking in hushed tones about 'the truth' and changing the subject when either he or Akaashi walked into the room. Everything became a game of hide and seek, placating smiles and responses of "Oh, we were just betting on the horses," as if Osamu had enough money to place bets.

"' _Once is chance, twice is a coincidence, three times and it's a pattern_ ,'" Osamu told him after a case, the rain soaking his grey hair. Sakusa had listened to his every word, eager to learn, "It's from a book."

"What else do you know?"

Other inspectors in the other divisions had warned Sakusa not to get too close to his enforcers. Sakusa thanked them politely. They don't understand. Division One is different, they're a tighter knit compared to the other units.

Osamu and Iizuna had been wary with his open arms at first, Iizuna more so, but they returned the same warmth eventually and took he and Akaashi under their wings.

They closer they got, the more Sakusa learned about them, about Iizuna's parents who'd refused to acknowledge the fact that their eldest son is an Enforcer and would rather pretend he doesn't exist, of Osamu's brother, attached to his side until his latent criminal status tore them and their family apart.

Sakusa drove him around town sometimes if it's a good day and he's not too tired. He did feel a little sorry for Osamu, always stuck in Headquarters. 

Osamu narrated as they passed his elementary school, the mall he used to frequent, his old house, the swimming pool he went to with his twin, memories filling the car before Sakusa came to a stop outside a modest looking home, half hidden behind a maple tree.

They sat there in the dark until Osamu saw his twin shuffle into view, being greeted at the door with a smile from his parents.

"You can go and say hi," Sakusa offered. It wouldn't be private, since Sakusa would have to accompany him.

His Enforcer shook his head, "I...."

Sakusa pretended to not see, the sadness and longing. It would be the last time Osamu saw his parents and brother.

In hindsight, he wished he'd spoken up about Osamu's hesitation.

They all died that spring, buried under cases and dead ends. The atmosphere in Division One turned sour. Iizuna retreated into his shell. The public wanted answers and they were too incompetent to find the culprit. 

Fights broke out between all of them and Osamu threw him out of the bullpen.

Sakusa was mad enough to throw him over his shoulder, feeling the cold floor on his palms as he picked himself up. He moves forward before a hand clamps down on his elbows.

"Why are you making this so hard for yourself?" Akaashi lost his temper in the middle of the hallway, "Just let the Enforcers do the investigation! You're going to become clouded if you keep this up!"

He doesn't think he's ever raised his voice so loudly in his life, "Then what am I here for?! To sit around and twiddle my thumbs?"

" _A deadweight Inspector is better than an Inspector who gets demoted to an Enforcer!_ "

"Aren't you a coward then?" Sakusa yelled, storming off, because the system was _wrong_. "Aren't we all just cowards if we let our Enforcers carry this burden on themselves?"

Akaashi did not follow him. 

The next day, riots in the streets broke out and they were separated from Akaashi. Sakusa took Iizuna and Osamu with him to Odaiba before he was bludgeoned in the head by one of the rioters, screaming as his right hand burned.

When he woke up, his right hand, Iizuna and Osamu were gone. The sunrise was beautiful, not a single cloud was up in the wide, blue sky.

Sakusa felt like dying, but how could he? The cherry blossoms were in full bloom and on his desk in Division One was Osamu's battered copy of Orwell's 1984 that he left there before they ran out. It even had Iizuna's stupid dog pen that he gave Sakusa jammed between the pages, the audio of a dog barking echoing in the too large office. Too empty office.

Everywhere he looked, he was reminded. In his dreams, he saw them, always walking away from his outstretched hand as he chased ghosts. When Chief Kasei visited him and handed him his Dominator, newly restored, he couldn't understand her.

"I..." He rasped, "I what?"

She handed him the handling records and stood there until she realized he couldn't talk. 

He continued to stare at the paper until his eyes burned, watching Kasei disappear and grabbing the Dominator that saved his life on more than one occasion, throwing it at the wall.

He slipped out of bed, landing on the floor with his knees and feeling the lines in his arms tear. Liquids drip down, red and clear and warm. Almost immediately, a nursing drone whizzed in before he kicked it to one corner, his leg stinging. There was no reason— no way that he—

The door hissed open and Komori stood there, panting, fearful.

"You believe me, right," He dug his fingers into Komori's arms, staring up at him from where he's crouched on the ground. His voice cracked, "I never— I didn't even know!"

He didn't know how he killed them. He didn't even know _why_ they were was killed, he didn't have any recollection of raising the gun to any of their backs. 

Did he kill them or did he not?

His yellow-green Hue darkened. Chartreuse. Pear. Cadmium Green. Swamp grey. The months following his breaking down was spent in medic bay, sedatives and anxiolytics running in his system, therapists coming in and out of his room, trying to get him to talk.

His Psycho Pass went up.

43.2, 57.7, 89.4, 120.1, 98.1, 148.8, 167.9, 188.2.

_Once is chance, twice is a coincidence, three times and it's a pattern._

This was the fourth reading of his Psycho Pass being above 100. It's more than a pattern now.

"What do I do, Osamu?" Sakusa rasped. This is the first time in weeks he used his voice. He gives the gravestone next to him a look, "What do I do, Iizuna-san?"

He couldn't protect them who still had families, siblings, fathers and mothers and grandparents and pets.

"Why did you join the PSB?" Osamu asked, curious, as Sakusa sat next to him on the bench. The hydrangeas are in bloom, all blue and purple. There was color on Osamu's cheeks; he must have traveled back in his memories.

"To protect the public," Sakusa gestured to the wards spread out from them, some twenty stories above ground level. It was a hot summer that year, "And to maintain this peace."

Then Sakusa heard himself, unsure, "Why did you both tell me not to take the role of being an Inspector too seriously?"

Osamu walked away from him. He leaned on the railing, looking down.

"Because we care. Don't follow our footsteps, Sakusa, no matter what you do."

Too late, he thought, watching the blue-purple of the hydrangea bush fade into a grey befitting of a corpse, watching Osamu shut his eyes— and they're sitting in his car again, Osamu watching his twin enter his home with a longing so potent Sakusa turned his head away to let a tear slip down his cheek. 

Sakusa thought about his old Enforcers, about his parents who don't recognize him anymore, about the golden haired twin holding a Dominator in his hands, his eyes Sibyl blue, full of loathing and resentment as he trained it to Sakusa's head, the rain drowning every noise out.

_"Are you sure it's because you're not responsible for my brother's death?"_

He wonders what would happen if he decided to be honest at that moment, to confess that he does think he's responsible for their deaths.

He wakes up in his bed, throat tight, gasping. He's crying so much that tears are waterlogging his ears.

They all leave anyway, one by one.

He'd always been alone.

_"Do you want to know what the Enforcers call Sibyl?"_

_"What?"_

_"_ _A beautiful lie."_

Another suicidal bomber case, this time in the office building of the National Diet.

Sakusa doesn't look at Akaashi as they strap on explosive proof vests. He fiddles with the settings of his wristwatch and watches as the vest disappear. 

They're just a precaution. 

Sakusa looks up at the clouds that have gathered, feeling his right hand twinge as he pulls on the leather gloves a little forcefully. Atsumu is looking at him strangely, being so distracted that Sakusa had to tackle him down when the second floor of the hallway collapsed and blacked out.

When he comes back to his senses, he blinks his eyes open to see that he's propped up against a wall in a hallway. There's a guard drone nearby and he has a blue PSB jacket draped around his shoulders.

For one second, one glorious split second, he feels heady relief at the chance to see his old team again before his right hand twitches.

The connection didn't feel right. Prosthetics had come a long way but there's still a faint mechanical whirring he picked up. The bubble is burst. 

He is an Enforcer.

He stands up, pushes all thoughts deep into the crevices of his head and rings his team.

The bomber killed majority of the politicians working today and sent them around a wild goose chase as he was moved to a structurally sound part of the building to recover. Sakusa feels the bitter loss clinging to him even if they're pulling away from the scene in Yachi's car.

"That's the third bombing case," Yachi softly says, steering. There was no need to guide the car, but she does it now, turning the auto-drive function off, "'Three times and it's a pattern.'"

Sakusa pulls his eyes away from the darkness around them, "We have nothing on them. They keep blowing themselves up, Komori is already looking into Cassandra."

Yachi's voice trembles, "You both have to promise me something, especially you, Sakusa."

Sakusa meets her eyes at the mirror, remembering her first day working as an Inspector in Division Two with Kiyoko, before Division One collapsed last spring and she was unexpectedly transferred to wrangle all of the broken pieces together.

"You're not going to get yourselves killed, I forbid it," She hiccups, tears in her eyes as Akaashi places a comforting hand on her shoulder, slowly taking her hands off the wheel and turning the auto-drive function on, "Osamu-san and Iizuna-san wouldn't want the both of you to go like the way they did."

He smiles at his shoes, "Is that an order?"

Yachi's eyes water.

When they get to Headquarters, Akaashi volunteered to accompany her to medical bay to get her assessed. Sakusa tagged along to get his head scanned before being discharged when no irregularities were seen. 

When he passes Yachi, he sees that she's talking to one of the therapists, a cup of tea in her hands, eyes swollen and red. He makes his way to the elevators and enters the empty bullpen, emptying his mind by typing his report away until a series of footsteps makes itself known.

Atsumu stands at the door, pausing. Sakusa looks away as he goes to his desk. Two sets of typing fill the room.

When he tears his eyes away from his computer, re-reading his report at least five times before sending it, Atsumu is hovering by the door.

He frowns, "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for you."

"Why?" It's past two in the morning from the hologram clock on the wall. Half the hallway lights are off to conserve energy.

Atsumu's eyes seems luminous in the semi-darkness, "So I can drive you home."

There are so many things wrong with that statement. The most glaring, is that Atsumu's being nice to him, though Sakusa already expected this. He changed a lot in just four months. He changed even more after Sakusa shielded him from the bomb and he pretend he was asleep when Atsumu visited him.

"...But I live here."

A squawk, " _Here?_ Like, Headquarters here?"

"This is the only place where latent criminal can run free. Where else do you think I live?"

Atsumu grumbles, spinning his car keys around his fingers, "You should have said something! I waited an extra hour for you to finish."

"I thought you knew this basic fact," Sakusa walks out of the office, quickly striding to the elevator. He presses his hand to his cheek. It's warm.

"You must be fun at parties," Atsumu shoots back, "You seem like the person who would crash it and burn it down—"

His voice is drowned out by a series of growls from his stomach. Atsumu turns a beetroot red as Sakusa snorts, before the flush in his cheeks rises up again because his own stomach, hearing the call of another, is responding.

"Is the cafeteria open?"

"There are people working around the clock here, of course it's open."

He stabs the button for the cafeteria so Atsumu can get food. The elevator slows down to a stop and the blond steps out, looking back expectedly at him and yelping, shoving his foot in to block the doors from closing when Sakusa hasn't moved.

"What are you doing?" He sighs.

Atsumu gestures to the empty cafeteria, "Eat? You're hungry too, right?"

"I can get food in my room."

"Don't be such a piss baby, Sakusa, come eat with me," Atsumu jams his foot, blocking the glass doors from closing again as Sakusa clenches his jaws.

"Fine," He mutters, walking straight towards the empty bar, a hologram of a pink jellyfish with an apron flickering to life as it whizzes around and starts telling Sakusa how he needs more fiber in his diet.

Sakusa shoves his ID into the screen in front of them, growling, "Stop scanning me without permission. One Hamburg steak set, houjicha tea and a Hokkaido milk pudding."

The pink jellyfish spins, thrilling, " _Your order has been heard! Please stand to the side and wait for approximately nine minutes and twenty-three seconds!_ "

Atsumu cackles at his lack of dietary fibers, following him to a table next to a floor to ceiling window. Sakusa ignores him as he tears into the food, dipping his broccoli and flower-shaped carrots into the mushroom and beef gravy before he turns his head right.

The night is pretty. He loves this view the best, up high, Tokyo a map of glittering neon lights and multilevel freeways. It reminded him of when he went on planes and leaned down windows.

Atsumu hums, leaning his chin on one hand as he taps a random beat on the table. Sakusa turns, slightly frowning.

"What?"

"Don't you drink coffee?" A pink tongue darts out to wet a pair of lips, "Like, a French vanilla brew?"

"I need to sleep soon."

"Bullshit," Atsumu laughs, gleeful and light, as he uses his fork to point at Sakusa, "Houjicha has caffeine. You're probably going to say you want to sleep, but you might...maybe take a quick walk back to our floor and visit Komori-kun?"

Sakusa takes an inhale, reminded of a similar memory, of how two years ago, he and Iizuna sat in the cafeteria like this as he told him all about reading people.

"That was good right?" Atsumu spears some salmon into his mouth, pushing away the lemon slices that are baked on top, "How's that for a reading?"

_They eat their fish the same way,_ he thinks.

"Sakusa?"

He lifts his head up. Atsumu seems to be at a loss with him, something like concern and apprehension in his eyes.

Gold eyes, luminous in the semi-darkness of the cafeteria, the right side of his face lit by the hot pinks and neon greens of Tokyo.

"Very good."

Atsumu grins at him. Sakusa watches as he scarfs down his food like he'll have to fight for every last grain of rice before his blood chills, thinking about clouding Hues and Atsumu not heeding his warning.

He understands Osamu's request too late.

He's glaring at Atsumu and Yachi, a hand on the suicide bomber cases as Akaashi's eyes flits back and forth between them like a tennis match. The air in the bullpen can be cut with a knife.

"That's enough with the researching, Motoya, Akaashi and I will handle it, go get a mental health scan," He jerks his chin towards the direction of the door, sleeves rolled around his elbows as Atsumu's eyebrows threatens to disappear into his hairline.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Atsumu mocks, stepping in front of Yachi and snarling. Sakusa is used to his short fuse, so this kitten anger doesn't ruffle him as he stares down his nose into Atsumu's eyes, "Who died and made you god? Are you ordering your superiors around?"

Yachi pipes up, trembling, "Sakusa, you should get yourself scanned too."

He snaps at her, "I'm fine! It's you both we're worried about. I don't need your Crime Coefficients to rise—"

"You really have poor faith in both of us, huh, Sakusa?"

"I'm worried about you both," He spits at Atsumu, raising his voice as Atsumu's shoulders rise towards his ears, "If you can get that statement past your thick skull—"

"I can take you off this case, you know that right?" Sakusa clicks his jaws together as Atsumu continues, "If anything, _you're_ the one who should be sitting out—"

"What?!"

"—I know what all of you are hiding!" Atsumu accuses all three of them, eyebrows furrowed. Somewhere in the hallway, an Area Stress Level alarm is going off, "This suicide bomber case is what happened a year ago! If the culprit of this one is the same person who was also active a year ago, then Samu lost his life in this! Isn't that why all of you are antsy and angry?"

Sakusa unsticks his jaw, "Then you understand why Akaashi and I want to get to the bottom of this case as soon as possible!"

"I want to do that too! Have you ever considered that?"

Yachi's voice joins the din, high and scratchy from Atsumu's, "No, Sakusa! I'm not letting you ruin your Crime Coefficient just so you can chas!—"

"You don't get to tell me what to do, Yachi! Those people!—"

" _Enough!_ " Akaashi snaps. Everyone whips their heads around to him, startled. Akaashi gestures to Inspectors and Enforcers running outside, "There's an Area Stress Level. We'll deal with that first."

Sakusa bares his teeth at Atsumu, grabbing his suit jacket from the back of his chair and shrugging it on as Yachi darts towards her desk. Atsumu scowls at him, a hand raising up to dig into his hair before he stops and lets it fall down.

" _Stop it_ ," Akaashi orders, stepping between both of them, "Both of you." He tugs Sakusa out of the bullpen, not waiting for the two blondes as they take the elevator down to the parkade.

Sakusa stews. He glares at Atsumu's head the entire time they're dealing with the ward alarm, making short work of the latent criminal on stimulants as his gun paralyzes him. It had started snowing when he and Akaashi threw the man into the back of the police van, Yachi's platinum hair turning darker with snow melting in it.

She waves a portable Hue scanner at him, the color mocking him. Swamp grey.

"You're taken off the case until your Hue clears up."

" _Yachi_ ," He pleads when she cuts him off with a firm shake of her head. She looks smaller in the rain.

"It's for your own good, Sakusa."

He knows this is for his own good, but staring into Yachi's eyes, he only thinks of how she was never with Division One until it fell apart. She never worked with Iizuna or Osamu. She didn't understand.

Akaashi doesn't say a word to him the ride back and Sakusa doesn't give him a chance to do anything, heading straight for the sparring room when the van comes to a stop.

That's where Atsumu finds him, leaning against one wall as Sakusa hooks his arms around one of the androids and flings it across the room, panting, as the hologram on the drone crackles and disappears. Smoke floats out of the joints.

"You broke it," Atsumu says mildly, nudging it with a toe of his expensive shoes. Sakusa spares him one glance before looking away, walking to the next sparring drone in the lineup and patting the chest to bring up the customization hologram screen. He opts for the hardest level as he launches himself back and starts blocking punches and kicks.

"Why are you here?" He asks, diving out of the way and rolling to his knees. He jumps, avoiding the leg sweep of the robot before landing on the balls of his feet.

He grabs the robot's fist, yanking it to his hip, and uses its momentum to drag it to the floor, pinning it. Atsumu tilts his head at the familiar move.

"Have you been going easy on me the whole time?"

He spares the windows around him a look, snapping, "Go home before the roads are too thick to clear."

"Too late," Atsumu says nonchalantly, "They already closed them. Everyone here is stuck in this building. Drones are trying to excavate a path but it looks like they're getting buried out there."

Sakusa's grandparents had told him about the Tokyo they lived in their youths. It was rare for now to pile up, as it usually built up on the top half of the country, but the planet overheating caused weather patterns to shift and now Tokyo got buried every winter, snow piling up as tall as some of the pine trees outside.

The idea that Atsumu is stuck at Headquarters bothers him more than it should. Sakusa jumps into a back kick, watching the drone fly towards the wall Atsumu was leaning against, joining its smoking friend on the ground, upside down.

"Jesus! Do you really want Property Damages to come after your ass?"

"I'm taking a shower," He hefts the two androids up and places them in a corner, knowing that a cleaning robot will find it sooner or later during its rounds and take it off his hands, "You're _not_ following me."

Atsumu follows him. Sakusa doesn't even bother telling him to avert his eyes, punching the holographic shower settings so the entire room is filled with billowing steam that hides Atsumu's stupid hair. He rinses his body as efficiently as he can, ignoring Atsumu's whistling, and stomps over to the lockers.

He grabs his work clothes and folds them into a bundle, tying everything with his belt. Because the dorms are just above the gym, he would rather walk around in a robe than dress up only to change into his sweats when he gets to his room.

Atsumu materializes out of the steam, following him.

"Why are you still here?" He closes his locker with more force than necessary. The lock whirs into place.

Atsumu says nothing. He follows him as Sakusa steps out of the gym holding his work clothes by his belt, taking the emergency stairs until he gets to the male Enforcer dormitory floor. Sakusa walks towards his apartment and slips in.

If Atsumu won't talk then he won't talk either.

He goes to the laundry basket to throw his clothes in. Then, he places his belt on the dining table before picking up a tub of hair cream from his bathroom, hearing his security hologram bark.

" _Intruder!_ " Sakusa watches as Atsumu tries to bat away the little Doberman away from snapping at his knees, " _Intruder! Vacate the premises immediately or a report will be filed to the Public Safety Bureau!_ "

"I _am_ the Public Safety Bureau!" Atsumu argues, "Shoo!"

Mocha continues to bark, ears flopping, tail whipping around. Sakusa grabs his personal copy of Murakami's _A Wild Sheep Chase_ and slams his bedroom door shut. Aside from the front door that only has a meager security system, none of the doors inside his apartment can lock, the joys of being an Enforcer.

He picks up where he left off, pulling away his bookmark and trying to quiet down the whirring in his head.

Pulled out of the case, he's essentially tossed aside like a ragdoll, of no use to the Bureau. The thought of sitting here idly while waiting for something to happen makes his blood boil.

He could be doing so much. He could be taking revenge, he could finish what Osamu and Iizuna had started. In a way, he'd went into being an Enforcer because he know one day he'll come across this case again, hoping to close it and make it so that their deaths weren't in vain.

The babble of Mocha and Atsumu arguing fades. Sakusa looks out his bedroom window and presses a hand on the clean glass windows, seeing a fog of grey outline his handprint.

The outside world, covered in a blanket of snow, must be below freezing. It didn't used to be like this apparently, Sakusa still has his grandparent's old pictures somewhere in his apartment, of Tokyo during the twenty-first century, none of the seventy foot tall skyscrapers with their sleek chrome finish and darkened windows around him existing.

Latent criminals like him could walk outside without Sibyl putting them on a leash. They had _options_ , they could enter into whatever job stream they wanted, they could date anyone, marry anyone, without the benevolent seer interrupting.

Their lives weren't decided upon a supercomputer program that used cymatic brain scans and other proprietary methods. At birth, you were a bundle of potential.

Now, you're assigned a role in society. A good society, with technological advances that allows you to change your clothes and your home interior's design with a flick of finger, holograms that know what vitamins you lack, food and medication catered specifically to your body, a list of potential jobs that you will excel at.

But no matter how these advances in technology made his life easier— he only needed to hold up a strand of his hair to a scanner at the drugstore before it showed him a list of products for his hair type, or the way the cafeteria jellyfish knew he was lacking fiber in his diet, or the way the medical drone at med bay could suture shallow cuts without him going to the hospital— there was a lack of choice.

No, there were choices, but not as many as society had last century.

Many times, he feels like a bird trapped in a cage. The truth. He understands now.

_"Do you want to know what the Enforcers call Sibyl?"_

_"What?"_

_"A beautiful lie."_

It's quiet outside. He wonders if Atsumu finally gave up and went away. Sakusa places his bookmark where he had it and peeks out of his room.

Atsumu is sitting on the floor, next to his couch, giving Mocha a belly rub.

Sakusa makes a face. He's too slow in moving back when Atsumu lifts his head and smiles, "Oh, done with your temper tantrum?"

"What did you do to my security system."

Atsumu replies, voice serene, "I disabled it. I come from a background in computing science, you know, I had an A rank in working for the Ministry of Technology, as well as the Ministry of Economy, Health, Education, Agriculture, Transportation—"

"I didn't ask for your list of As across the board."

"What did you get when you took the aptitude test?"

Sakusa thumbs his paperback, looking at the way Mocha's tail is wagging furiously, "A ranks in Ministry of Welfare and Ministry of Health."

"Only two?"

"Why are you still here?"

Atsumu taps on his watch. The suicidal bombing case files projects all around them, like tiny, rotating planets, throwing their faces in cool blue light.

"I'm curious about this," Atsumu evenly says, "Of course I'll be, since this is related to Samu's death. An Inspector's duty is to watch over their Enforcers, right? I'll let you read these with me and unsuspend you from the investigation on one condition that we measure your Psycho Pass every twenty minutes."

Sakusa narrows his eyes.

Atsumu arches one eyebrow, waiting.

"...Fine."

He slashes the air with his hand. Mocha fades away and Atsumu stands up, moving automatically to the dining table, bringing up the table's ordering panel. A beat later, a fissure in the wood design opens and two trays of food with a large pot of French vanilla coffee is neatly deposited.

Atsumu launches straight into the meat of the data, slurping noodles and splattering droplets of broth and fat all over Sakusa's spotless table as he starts talking. It seems that he's been dying to speak to someone about the case materials.

They comb through it all once their meals are finished. Sakusa looks back at the documents Osamu and Iizuna poured over, the words familiar. Bombs, National Diet, politicians, doctors, lawmakers.... All targeted. It's exactly like the last case he took part of as an Inspector. And what Komori had dug out about Cassandra, of the Greek tragedy, the potential connections all the bombers had with each other that led to nowhere once more.

It's too similar.

"The former division couldn't get a lead on the case, right?"

"The bombers all blew themselves up before we could do that and took victims with them," Sakusa testily says. He doesn't like to be reminded of his failures. "None of them have any connection with each other. It's as if a hive mind of random people got together."

"Strange."

Sakusa presses his hands to his eyes, "Do you have the report on the chemical composition of the bombs?"

"Take your Psycho Pass first."

Sakusa takes his wristwatch and holds it close to his temples. He sits in silence as the alert about his deteriorating Hue echoes in the room.

Atsumu is quiet. Between eating and spending the last hour with Sakusa, he'd made himself at home, pulling his knees up to his chest with his tie on the table. He'd opened the first two buttons of his dress shirt, exposing his throat and collar bones. 

The amount of skin displayed, the eventual droop of his hair after it's been carded through too many times, his suit jacket taken off, the sleeves rolled up— it all looks too intimate and Sakusa can't look away.

"What do you do to relax, Sakusa?"

The answer is immediate, "Whatever the therapists tells me to do."

"Do you actually do them?"

Sakusa clenches his jaws. He looks off to the side of the room, where a stack of papers and ink jars lie, "Sometimes."

"Why?"

"I don't like excessive stress care."

"...Why?"

"You don't know when to stop, do you?"

"I'm trying to figure you out. Whether you're the type to feel better after venting to someone, or if you need to fight something to destress. I'm leaning more towards the latter."

Sakusa gives him a glare. He doesn't like being studied like a living and breathing 3D model, but Atsumu shows no sign of stopping.

He often forgets how badly Enforcers are treated when the general public know they're outside. Yachi, because she knew him as an Inspector first, treated him no differently, allowing him to take the lead in cases. It wasn't until Atsumu entered his life that Sakusa remembered how wary Iizuna had been when he first met him.

He gives a quick glance outside to the blizzard burying the city. He flits his eyes back to Atsumu, mouth relaxed, eyes curious and honest as the blue light of the file shines onto his bare neck.

"My parents are dying of Eustress Deficiency in a healthcare facility just outside of Hakone. They relied too much on stress care. That's why I don't like them."

He draws one of the earlier reports he'd casted away towards him, "It's ironic. They're both the best surgeons in their field and take mental health seriously. We took family vacations all the time, but I guess anyone can get addicted to Hue clearing medications and lose interest in living."

Lose interest in him, a stain in their family name. Their conditions appeared around the same time he was demoted to an Enforcer. A part of him always wondered if that was the last nail on the coffin.

"I'm sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?"

"I'm...just sympathizing. It must be hard, to not be able to visit them unless an Inspector goes with you."

Sakusa looks away from his face. Pity, a thing he hated so much when he was demoted, is clear on Atsumu's face now, but he doesn't mind it as much as he used to, when he couldn't stand being around other members of the CID without wanting to knock their teeth out.

Atsumu fiddles with the collar of his shirt, "I have second thoughts about the system all the time now, ever since Samu died. It's not right, the way Sibyl does things, but I can't deny that there are benefits."

Sakusa stares at him.

He presses his wristwatch to his temples again. Sibyl beeps. 

His Hue clears slightly. Atsumu passes over the bomb analysis report and pours him more coffee. They return to work.

Sakusa wakes up with a jolt. It's dark, with city lights entering from the slits of his blinds illuminating his furniture in eerie yellows from whatever can shine through the snowstorm.

He frowns, wondering how he made it to the couch. There's a suit jacket covering him that pools around his lap when he sits up. It smells like cologne. A familiar heat pool around his neck.

Atsumu is snoring on his dining table, head pillowed by his arms. By the looks of his spine, he'll be sore and stiff, so Sakusa pushes open the door of his bedroom and tucks him to his chest, lifting him in a bridal carry so he can deposit him.

Mocha wags its tail, staying quiet as Sakusa works Atsumu's slippers off, placing it next to the bed. 

Sakusa orders, "Keep the bed warm."

" _As you wish_ ," Mocha replies, curling up into a ball as Sakusa closes the door shut. He looks at the glowing files hovering on top of his dining table and decides to wait, finding a spare blanket in his closet and curling up on the couch, reading his book before he inevitably falls asleep.

When he wakes up, there's a banging of pots and pans. Something's cooking. Sakusa blearily opens his eyes, wondering if Komori allowed himself in when he sees the blue files float on top of his dining table, Atsumu's grey suit jacket draped on the back of a chair, and his bedroom door ajar. Mocha bounds up to him.

" _Good morning Sakusa Kiyoomi!_ " It barks. Sakusa grumbles, shoving Mocha's snout away from his ears, " _Your Psycho pass is forest green! Please take care of your Hue today with lots of mental care and rest!_ "

Atsumu looks at him when Sakusa shuffles to the kitchen, wearing an apron to hide the giant wrinkles on his baby blue dress shirt. 

Sakusa looks at the stove, blinking. Atsumu's cooking actual food, not the synthetic stuff the cafeteria and his microwave can make in fifteen seconds. There's an actual egg in his frying pan that definitely didn't come from his empty fridge.

Atsumu gives him a quick glance before he turns his head back to inspect the omelet, "Sakkun, you look like shit. Go take a shower."

It's as good as an advice he'll receive. Sakusa lingers in the bathroom steam as long as possible for the health of his pores.

His mirror shows his reflection, but there's a stain of pink across his cheeks that wasn't there yesterday. And his eyes looked brighter. 

He stares at the stranger looking back at him, trying to place the expression before he realizes it's happiness.

_Oh._

"Good timing!" Atsumu thrills, taking the apron off and carelessly draping it over his suit jacket as he enters the shower next, "Go eat while it's still warm!"

Sakusa dutifully follows the suggestion, wondering when the last time he had a home-cooked meal was. When Atsumu exits his shower with wet hair and asks if there's something spare in his closet, he settles for digging in his closet after breakfast. They get into a snappy conversation about why the only thing that fit his wide shoulders are Sakusa's pair of neon yellow and lime green tracksuit.

"All these clothes and you're telling me I have to wear this bird of paradise get up and look like a half-ripe banana?"

Sakusa is offended. The city is still buried in snow. A warning from the government for all citizens to stay indoors has been enacted, "Beggars can't be choosers!"

"You own all these nice and fancy suits! How come I've never seen you in anything besides black?"

"Stop poking around my other stuff!"

"There must be something in here that isn't directed at melting my retinas!" 

"Fine! I'll ask Motoya or Akaashi if they have something that meets your stupid standards!"

Atsumu seems to turn cranky when he mentions his cousin, "Oh rub it in my face, won't you?"

"Huh?" Sakusa looks left and right around his empty room for his wristwatch, remembering that he took it off briefly to charge. He could just knock on their doors since they all live on the same floor, but he likes to give them a heads up, "What are you on?"

Atsumu's face twist. Sakusa can see him trying to bury an emotion, like throwing a chest of jewels overboard so the sea can reclaim it, but he's not as practiced as Sakusa in burying unnecessary things, watching as jealousy tinges his eyes before he leans forward and kisses him.

His aim is terrible, he's kissing his philtrum and a bit of his top lip instead, insistent and almost desperate, like he's trying to get across a message to him without speaking. A bit of sunlight sneaks through the blinds— when did it stop snowing?— to turn Atsumu's hair into a richer, brass blond.

Sakusa keeps his eyes open, frozen, until Atsumu leans back slightly and opens his eyes.

"You're supposed to close your eyes when someone kisses you."

"What was that?" He looks down at him. The kiss is burning his blood. Sakusa hears his heartbeat in his ears, feeling heat crawl across his cheeks as he sees Atsumu steadily turn red, "Miya, what was—"

"I know you're dating Komori-kun!" Atsumu shouts, "But I had to do that once. I'm sorry, alright?"

Sakusa is too late in stifling the snort that comes out of his mouth.

Atsumu glares at him, looking as murderous as he did the first day they met, "You're such an _ass_ , you don't need to be like this when someone confesses—"

"Motoya and I are cousins."

"Huh."

Sakusa repeats it, slower. Atsumu stares at him like he'd declared that all latent criminals would be allowed to rejoin society, " _Cousins?_ " His voice climbs impossibly high, "You both are _related?_ You two look nothing alike! You and Akaashi? That I can believe, but you and Komori!?—"

"Go ask him if you don't believe me. He's down the hall."

Atsumu looks at their feet. Sakusa can see the cogs in his heading creaking, deciding that he has better uses of his time than to wait. He plants himself on the dining table again and tries to immerse himself in the case.

It fails, because he's been reading the same line five times when Atsumu, wearing a t-shirt that stretches tightly around his shoulders and Sakusa's neon track jacket, appears by his elbow.

"Can I kiss you?"

His ears are red when Sakusa looks up. He closes his eyes this time when Atsumu takes that as his answer and bends down. They somehow maneuver through his apartment before falling on Sakusa's bed, the weak winter sun beaming through the blinds.

When Sakusa has Atsumu pinned, his face flushed like they've been chasing latent criminals down alleyways, he wonders what this is to him.

He thinks about Atsumu's Sibyl matches, mentions of dinner dates, weekend trips outside the city and wonders how he comes into play in Atsumu's life.

"What is this to you?" He whispers to his neck, in between capitalizing on a weak spot and bruising it as hard as possible.

Atsumu appears to not have heard him. Sakusa shoves the thought into the back of his mind as a hand knits into the back of his head and brings him up to Atsumu's mouth. The neon jacket comes off after that. 

The rest of their clothes follows.

Casual flings isn't uncharted territories for him. Hell, he's had flings with Akaashi before Bokuto, the Enforcer in Division Three, made moon eyes at him across the cafeteria. He even kissed Ushijima once, though he gently let him down and told him that Sakusa wasn't his type.

As Atsumu snores next to him, Sakusa watches as clouds obscure the sun yet again, a hand in Atsumu's hair— looking ashy and grey as the light starts to fade. They'd spent the entire day in his room.

Sleeping with a superior, or relationships between Inspectors and Enforcers happen more frequently than expected. 

But always, Enforcers are discarded at the end of the day. They're just too different. Enforcers can't marry in this day and age.

There would be no happy ending with this story.

"I thought you hated me," He tells Atsumu's golden head, discovering a small mole on the shell of his ear. He tugs the blanket higher over his body, "You should."

Atsumu continues to sleep. Sakusa orders Mocha to keep Atsumu and the bed warm as he slithers out to read files, checking his Psycho Pass every twenty minutes.

It's early evening when his blanket is draped over him. Sakusa pauses, his pen poised over paper while he takes notes the old fashioned way instead of dictating to a program.

"Come to bed?" The voice says to him, quiet and uncertain, "The files can wait."

He smells like his sheets and sleep. Sakusa stands and abandons the dining table, closing the bedroom door after him and following Atsumu.

Atsumu is softer in the mornings, away from the bullpen and the fact that they're two very different people occupying opposite social standings. He hums old songs from their parent's era as he makes breakfast from scratch (something Sakusa watches with interest, too used to the synthetic food the automated kitchens make), tells Sakusa about the old plum tree in his old house and marks every single inch of bare skin with bruises, their hands tangled beneath blankets.

He asks questions. Endless questions about Sakusa's childhood, what it was like to have his cousin become a latent criminal around the same time Sakusa entered the PSB, his university experience, the best cities he's ever flown to, the matches Sibyl had for him prior to his demotion.

And Sakusa learns about Atsumu, only child.

"We hated having the same Hue color assigned to us," Atsumu says, pulling all the pasta noodles from a pot and tossing it in a white sauce as Sakusa watches, "It darkened here and there with stress— Samu could never sleep when school exams were around the corner— but it always cleared back up, you know?"

The first time Osamu's Crime Coefficient went up into the one hundreds, they sent him off to a mental care facility for the weekend. His brother returned soon.

"Then Baa-chan died, Kaa-san remarried, I barely came home from school and he was alone."

They bump elbows in the shower, Atsumu's voice magnified thanks to the acoustics.

"I always wondered what they did to him in there," He stares unseeingly, water trailing down his neck and collarbones, "If a piece of him was lost and never came back when we got the news that he turned into a latent criminal."

Sakusa doesn't say anything but run his fingers through Atsumu's hair, watching the suds build up, massaging his head.

"Why did you go into technology?"

Atsumu smiles, leaning back until he makes eye contact with him, "Did you know? Samu and I studied that in high school. You can guess, right? Read me like a criminal, Omi-kun."

"At first, because it's what you chose, but later, to change something within the system," He murmurs, watching Atsumu's dark lashes flutter to a close, "But then he died. And you abandoned it."

"...You're too good at this," Atsumu spins around, taking some suds to smear over Sakusa's cheeks. He pulls him under the spray and kisses him on the lips once the suds are gone.

Sakusa knows the snow storm outside won't last. Eventually, all the drones will dig out paths for cars, salt will be tossed in every single corner and the city will start back up again.

Just like how this reprieve of theirs won't last.

Atsumu makes a noise, rolling over from a nap and stretching obscenely, the blanket slipping down to reveal a set of long parallel scratches down his back. Sakusa reminds himself to buy some more healing and scar cream since they've used most of them up when Atsumu turns around.

"What's that?"

Sakusa dips the glass nib into the pot of ink, continuing with his sketch of the open sea. It's a view he saw often as a child, jumping off cliffs with Komori, "Doodling. My therapist recommends this as a technique to relax."

Atsumu runs hotter than normal and he presses up to him, quiet, "It's really good. You said you've never been recommended as an artist by Sibyl?"

"I never started again until recently," Only several artists were approved by Sibyl. He didn't make the cut and was recommended another path. Sakusa always wondered what would happen if he pursued it.

Atsumu hums. Sakusa feels his feathery light hands trace around his left arm that's holding the clipboard and paper. Sakusa sets the glass pen into the inkpot, making sure the clipboard won't fall before twisting his torso and putting his right hand on Atsumu's bare waist.

Atsumu shivers. Sakusa pulls back immediately, an apology on his tongue before Atsumu somehow unbalances him and hovers on his lap, face lit from the lamp on his bedside.

"Your right hand is just colder than the left," He traces Sakusa's jawline with his nose, puffing warm breath over his skin and sucking on his pulse, "Just caught me by surprise."

Much later, when the city is quiet, all sounds absorbed by the snow around them, Atsumu traces his finger on Sakusa's prosthetic hand, the metal warm, feeling the weight of it, running his fingers over each groove.

"When did you lose it?"

"Last spring, my last case as an Inspector."

They've turned the lamp off. What light comes in is from the many neon billboards around them shining through the snow and the few office windows that are lit. Sakusa ingrains the view to memory.

"Is that why you paint?"

"Yes." 

Each line he drew required patience. Every jitter shows if he's not relaxed enough. Line by line, sketching the darkness of the sea, the movement of the water, the scattered seashells on the sand. Again and again, as he dips his glass pen into the pot of ink, emptying his mind and focusing only on the strokes.

"I should have apologized to you ages ago but," Atsumu swallows, "I checked the handling records of your Dominator and asked around. I heard...you were knocked out and rushed to a hospital. So you couldn't have shot them."

So that was what ran through his mind when Sakusa was in medic bay, pretending to be asleep.

"Sometimes I feel responsible for it," He holds his hand up, flexing the metal fingers and following Atsumu's eyes as he looks at it twist left and right, "If I hadn't been attacked, I would've been able to protect them."

"It's not your fault, Sakusa. Hell, _I_ should be saying sorry for dumping hot coffee on you."

_It still feels like it's my fault_ , he thinks, watching the way the shadows paint the walls, _it's why you're brother-less._

"Get up," He suddenly says, tugging on Atsumu's arm. He ignores the wolf whistle, grabbing a pair of pants at the end of his bed as Atsumu follows him to his living room.

He rifles for the cabinet pushed to the wall near his TV, pulling out a different type of brush and paper than the one he had in his room and spreading them all on his dining table.

Atsumu frowns when Sakusa presses an ink brush into his hand.

"Omi?" 

Sakusa shushes him and wraps his hand around his, digging deep into his memory.

A pair of eyes first, then a nose, a mouth and he could hear Atsumu's breathing hitch, watching his twin come to life. Sakusa grabs a bottle of warm chestnut and colors in his eyes. Some red for the mouth and cheeks. Light blue-purple for the shadows on his face. A hint of white acrylic paint to bring the eyes to life. Emerald for the color of his shirt.

He sets that one to the side and starts painting Akaashi with a hand on his chin, staring at something faraway. 

The stories flow out of his mouth, Atsumu sitting quietly as he paints. What his home looked last before he was labeled an Enforcer, a portrait of his parents and extended family when they were all younger and happier. Iizuna and Osamu laughing, sitting on a bench when Sakusa took them to a park. The view from the cafeteria, lights dotting the cityscape.

His first case with Osamu and Iizuna, Osamu politely bringing homemade food to the office every now and then, Iizuna making a beeline to the plant section at the small farmer's market the one time Sakusa and Akaashi stopped to fix a flat tire. Osamu's birthday, the way they smeared icing on his cheek, Iizuna kissing Osamu as a dare and the times Akaashi stopped by a patisserie to pick up cakes for them all. 

Even if the night is dark, they make a world of color come alive through their hands. Deep sea green in Akaashi's eyes, blood red cherries from Sakusa's childhood and from when Atsumu had punched his face, navy blue in Iizuna's shirts, soft fleece grey in Osamu's hair being whipped around in the wind, Atsumu's new home with the maple tree with the sun setting around them. Mauve, lavender blue, and pastel pink clouds.

And for what reason he tries to tell all these stories, he doesn't know, but he knows that he wants Atsumu to remember them— him, if anything were to happen.

He stares at the faces of the people he misses the most, the brush still in his hand. They looked happy, immortalized in watercolor. 

He couldn't protect that.

He doesn't notice the tears dripping onto the back of Atsumu's neck until Atsumu twists around, lifting a hand to wipe them away.

"I'm sorry," He finally apologizes, the first morning rays of the sun coming in through the windows. It felt cathartic, to tell someone else of Osamu's and Iizuna's death, about his parents who had forgotten about him, about him and Akaashi's decline into Enforcers, "About your brother. I couldn't protect him like I was supposed to."

And when he opens his eyes, Atsumu is cupping his face, eyes watering too, "It's okay," He leans up to kiss his tear tracks, "It's okay."

Atsumu tells him in between the days, both of them wrapped up in blankets and watching the city coming back to life.

"It's weird you know," Atsumu softly says. Without makeup, his dark circles are large beneath his eyes. Something in his chest twists as Sakusa realizes that he's not the only one who can see this side of Atsumu, "I tried so hard to see him, but he always said shit about giving us Psycho-Hazard."

Sakusa looks up from the sketch of Atsumu in his hands, halfway through his mouth.

"The part that's most fucked up...I didn't understand why he pushed us away. Next thing I know, he joined the PSB and I felt so angry. My brother's not a dog you people use to catch criminals. He can empathize and understand people, but he'd never hurt a fly."

He's in the car again, Osamu next to him and Sakusa turning his head away, watching Atsumu being greeted at the door by his parents, "He didn't want to interfere," He realizes. "He didn't want to interfere with your life, the one on the fast track to the Ministry of Technology's ladder."

Atsumu looks down at the mug of tea Sakusa made for him, "What a fucking dumbass. Of course he never interfered."

They could spend years trying to puzzle out Osamu, deciphering his words and actions and motives behind not ever getting out of the car when Sakusa urged him to say hi, in him hiding away from his family.

Sakusa leans forward and presses their mouths softly together, drawing back. Atsumu's cheek slowly turns red the longer he makes eye contact and Sakusa wants the world to stop for a while to drink it in.

"He cared."

"I know," Atsumu looks to the side where the painting of Osamu in mid-laugh has dried, "I know he did."

Atsumu picks at the blanket around his shoulders. Sakusa can see the marks the PSB training did on his body, switching so suddenly from his desk job to a job running after criminals. There are stretch marks around the bulge of his biceps, the skin pearlescent and almost silver.

They slowly pull themselves out of the dreamland, of four days of solitude with the city shut down and half the neighbourhoods losing power.

They return to the bombing files. For the first time in months, Sakusa's Crime Coefficient dips below two hundred.

"Nice to know you're alive," Komori says with a smile, following them to the cafeteria. Sakusa glares at the air in front of him, tugging on his tie with his every day suit in the darkest blacks he owns, "And monopolizing an Inspector during the snowstorm."

Atsumu clears his throat, ears red. Sakusa had laundered his clothes and steamed it, but he's essentially wearing what he last wore to the office, "Omi-ku—"

" _'Omi-kun?_ '" Komori thrills, wiggling his eyebrows and dodging Sakusa's well aimed kick to his shins.

"—said you were looking up Cassandra for us."

The smile vanishes from his face, "Yes," He says, hovering outside the doors of the cafeteria, "There's a meeting this morning in the analytical lab. Make sure everyone in Division One is attending."

Sakusa stares at him, a pit falling into his stomach. Komori waves a hand and leaves them.

Atsumu leans into him before tugging his sleeves to step forward, "That can't be good."

Sakusa wants to agree when he looks up to see several curious gazes linger at them, eyes on Atsumu's hand that's holding onto the material of his suit.

They've never spoken about what happens next after the snow storm. He doesn't even know what they are— if they have a _thing_ between them, or if Atsumu even wants to define it or wants to pretend nothing ever happened. Sakusa tried, but the words always got lodged in his throat.

"Miya—"

"' _Miya?_ '" Atsumu mocks a pained expression, clutching his heart. Sakusa flits his eyes around him, "It's as if our time together—"

"We're at work. I expect you to be an Inspector."

Atsumu blinks. Sakusa braces himself for his explosive anger but it never came.

Atsumu takes back his hand, smiling, "Right you are, Sakusa. Let's get breakfast and work hard today." He heads over to the short line, pulling out his ID to scan the preloaded card when Sakusa looks down and wishes he never said anything.

Yachi isn't particularly happy when Sakusa shows up at Komori's lab. Atsumu quick stepped in and explained it to her, waving his hands around like he's miming, that they've taken precautions during the city-wide shut down to make sure his Psycho Pass wasn't aggravated.

Sakusa's dread comes true when her eyes starts swimming in tears. Atsumu trails off. Akaashi pulls out a package of tissues from the pockets of his slacks.

"I'm sorry," Yachi says, taking a tissue and dabbing it under her eyes before it could mess her mascara up, "I... I just don't want to see you getting hurt again, Sakusa."

He understands, being in her position and not wanting to lose any more people precious to her. He doesn't want to wish onto her the pain he felt when his Enforcers died.

"I'll be careful," He promises.

Komori clears his throat awkwardly. They all spring apart and take their seats as his cousin puts out his cigarette and stands up.

He summarizes what Sakusa and Atsumu figured out from the case a year ago, drawing parallels of the bombs having the same chemical compositions and the targets being high profiled politicians, governors, lawmakers, hospitals and tech tycoons. 

"I finally found Cassandra," Komori waves his hands to the profiles of the citizens who were taken out by suicidal bombers, "There's nothing in the Sibyl System about it, but I crawled around the deep web of anti-Sibyl supporters and there's a website where people display their dissatisfaction in the system—" A screen pops up, reminiscent of an internet forum, "—What I think happens is that these people are contacted by Cassandra to plant the bombs.

"Hence why there's no relation to those bombers," Komori crosses his arms, "Because these people are picked at _random_."

"' _Only she speaks the truth of the Sibyl System,_ '" Akaashi murmurs, staring at the files, "Of course, politicians, city governors, directors of hospitals and pharmaceuticals, CEOs of tech industries, and some higher ups in the PSB were visiting the National Diet when you were called there. All those targets are people who benefitted from the Sibyl System." 

"Did you locate Cassandra?" Sakusa asks, "Did you see the packages being dropped off at residences or deals being made?"

"If there were deals, they must have happened in the abandoned blocks where there's no cameras. I haven't found anything."

"Your brother knew," A voice says.

Atsumu whips his head around to stare at Akaashi, his mouth open.

Akaashi shrugs, "Iizuna-san and Osamu-san probably knew, but they kicked us out of the investigation because they didn't want our Hues to cloud. We have to start from the beginning."

Atsumu stands, eyes aflame, "Then let's get back to the bullpen, we have research to do!" He strides out quickly.

Sakusa turns to look at Komori, who is staring at the screens with interest, "...I didn't even connect them together like that."

Sakusa scoffs, "We're not dogs for show, you know," Yachi stands up, tapping away on her phone to make notes as he and Akaashi shrink all the holograms back down, "But good job."

He catches Akaashi pressing his lips together as Yachi exits the room, "What?"

"Why use bombs to take them out? They were placed sloppily and involved other victims, not just those higher-ups. There's a risk when using them because we could track where they're getting them from."

Sakusa frowns.

"I already tried to track where they're getting the materials from," Komori sighs, "I'm not getting anything. And it's not like they have the access to Dominators since guns are banned. Even if they did, Sibyl won't recognize them. They would need an Inspector's or Enforcer's fingerprints."

Sakusa looks into Akaashi's eyes, noticing the blue-green color. It shifts depending on the light in the room.

"I'm sure we'll find out more things along the way," Sakusa tells him, "Osamu and Iizuna-san knew more than us anyway. If we go through their old documents we can find things."

Akaashi nods, turning his way and heading towards the door. Sakusa squeezes Komori's shoulder and waves goodbye at him, following Akaashi through the halls, "They've kept Osamu-san's and Iizuna-san's belongings, right?"

"They should," Sakusa leads them through the HR floor, waiting outside the two glass doors until someone comes out. Enforcers aren't allowed to go in unescorted, "I remember getting Iizuna-san's dog pen two weeks after he died."

Akaashi hums. 

They both straighten when someone from HR comes and lets them in through the door. When Sakusa asks if they could see the box containing Osamu's and Iizuna's miscellaneous belongings, Akaashi hushes him.

" _It's gone?_ " Sakusa struggles to reign in his fury, thinking about the gacha keychains of food Osamu collected, how happy he'd been whenever Akaashi bought one for him and of Iizuna's many succulents, cacti and watering cans that threatened to overtake his desk, "All of it?"

The employee nervously steps away, "W-We only keep the personal artifacts of the deceased for six months before they're thrown out."

Sakusa glares at her before Akaashi steps in front of him, thanking her before dragging him bodily away.

Sakusa stabs the button for the CID floor with enough force that the button doesn't spring back, "They had slips of paper and Iizuna-san carried that notebook everywhere he went in the last month! What if was all written inside?!"

"I know," Akaashi whispers, leaning against the wall as they shoot up, "But glaring won't make it reappear."

His eyes are glazed.

Yachi had pulled every single company that had access to explosive chemicals and materials into a spreadsheet. They each were assigned a handful of names, and are ordered to comb through their inventory to see if the order and receiving numbers matched, trying to find a hole.

Sakusa rubs his face, his computer screen filled with hundreds and hundreds of inventory reports. There must be a shorter way to do this.

"Maybe we should get lunch," Yachi's voice cuts through the office. Sakusa turns his head at her, her face blurring for one second as he blinks and feels the drag of his eyelids on his dry eyes. She refocuses, "I mean...."

She flickers her eyes towards Atsumu, who has headphones clamped around his ears, wearing a thousand yard stare, and Akaashi, who is staring at a screen and forcing his computer to auto scroll while he gulps down the largest cup— or is that a soup bowl?— of coffee Sakusa has ever seen with a straw.

"Lunch sounds good," He agrees, eager to get away from screens. He locks his station, shakes Atsumu's arm, and they all troop down to the cafeteria.

"How does Komori do this every day?" Akaashi mumbles, wilting in the elevator. Sakusa shrugs, his respect for his cousin growing by the day. Komori is too busy assisting Division Two in a case right now to join them.

Yachi herds them to a table by the windows, chirping to Kuroo on his way out and greeting several officers in the traffic department. Akaashi sits primly in the sun, Atsumu next to him, the light turning his hair bright gold, rubbing his eyes.

They don't talk much, each of them focused on eating. Ever since Sakusa tasted actual produce again, he can't ignore the fact that synthetic food has a peculiar texture.

Atsumu's knees bump into his below the table. Sakusa taps back against him, chewing his curry when a clatter of metal hits someone's bowl.

"We can open the files they had," Akaashi says suddenly.

Sakusa looks up to see Atsumu being dragged away from the table, arms wind-milling. Yachi stares blankly at him before they swallow their last bites, drain their cups of water and tea and book it.

Akaashi is waiting for them by the elevators, gaze sharp, a white-knuckled fist on Atsumu's wrist. 

It's cold in the archives and there's a clear lack of windows. Akaashi asks Atsumu if there's a way to open files on someone's previously terminated account. Atsumu says there's a way.

"Perhaps they've written down the suspects they had," Akaashi tells them, before disappearing to get some coffee from the front.

Sakusa sits next to Atsumu's computer of choice, watching him log on before navigating the mess of system admin privileges. He stares at the blur of his hands over the keyboard before logging in and syncing with his screens back on the CID floor and looking at the reports he left.

"It's a good thing a lot of things are backed up on cloud," Atsumu tells him that night, sitting between Sakusa's legs as Sakusa helps him paint flowers, mixing the watercolors together on the couch, their legs tucked beneath a blanket. The flowers are drawn a little sloppy, but they're endearing in their own way.

Sakusa hums, watching how the light of his apartment changes color on Atsumu's hair. The undercut, left alone from bleaching, is a warm, dark brown. A lone mole on the shell of his ear draws Sakusa's attention to the hazy red and purple mark on Atsumu's neck, the outline fuzzy.

He can recreate that color, he's sure, staring at the hickey with a little twist of amusement. Some brick red, a peach tone, and water to dilute the edges so the color fades. There's a smaller one next to it, almost on the curve of Atsumu's trapezius, that's older, the green-blue center speckled with dark purples while the edges turn yellow.

Sakusa never bought the new bottle of anti-bruising cream that day. Atsumu always wore his shirts properly at work, and both of them knew exactly how high they can go before the collars of their shirts would be too low to cover it. 

Their clothes are strewn around Sakusa's apartment. He'll have to pick them up later, before his Roomba becomes too upset because it can't vacuum things larger than a few dust bunnies and the occasional crumbs.

"We didn't find a lot though."

"There's still time, Omi-kun," Atsumu says. Sakusa watches as the sinews of his neck flex, allowing his golden head to turn as he gazes at the paint selection, "Picking apart programs like that takes patience, trust me, when I had open a backdoor for one assignment in university...."

Sakusa tugs the brush out of his hands, pulling the canvas away. Atsumu turns to protest but melts when Sakusa spins him in his lap, the blanket bunching and threatening to fall off.

"You talk too much about things I don't understand," Sakusa nips his ear.

Atsumu laughs. And then they don't speak much after that.

Sakusa wakes to fingers running through his hair, snagging on a strand every now and then. His right foot is colder than his left which meant that Atsumu must have hogged the blankets again and left him inching around for warmth.

He slits open his eyes to see Atsumu sitting up with a giant grin on his face. There's color riding his cheeks and his hair is sticking up in every direction.

His heart clenches just the slightest. Sakusa, given the chance, will pick corn floss yellow and ambrosia for his hair, rose for his cheeks and ears, mauve and purple for the shadows and the marks on his neck, drinking in the sight.

"Wanna know something?"

"What?" He grunts, still not fully awake.

"You said my name in your sleep."

Sakusa smacks him with a pillow, cutting his peal of laugher short. Atsumu pins him down and Sakusa wrestles back, eventually overpowering him and huffing, the sun making shadows across his blinds and onto the wall.

"You could be lying," Sakusa points out. He did sleep talk when he was younger, but that was when he was still short enough to be tucked under his mother's arms. The mortification of saying Atsumu's name disturbs him slightly, but he settles for distributing his weight evenly so Atsumu can't buck him off.

Atsumu smiles up at him.

"Marry me."

A cloud obstructs the sun, the gold fading out of Atsumu's hair. Sakusa could feel his warm skin pressing on his bare legs and thighs, seeing the lighthearted smile on Atsumu's face turn serious as he repeats his words.

"Marry me, Kiyoomi."

There are many things he could say. 

The first, a visceral reflex he tamps down just in time, the image of waking up next to a sleep-ruffled Atsumu every morning: _Yes, I want to._

_I can't, because the system doesn't allow Enforcers the right to marry,_ comes next, bringing with it cold running down his bare neck and back.

_I shouldn't, because our relationship will be nothing but pain once I've outlived my usefulness to society_. _What will your parents say when they find out you're in a relationship with the same Enforcer who was responsible for Osamu's death?_

A tear lands on Atsumu's chin, dripping down. He blurs as Sakusa looks up at his ceiling, feeling the liquid in his nose travel backwards, "Who would marry you?" He forces out a laugh.

When he looks down, Atsumu is grinning, tears leaking out of his eyes, "Right?"

Then, like a switch, Atsumu sits up and frowns at him, pushing Sakusa's legs off, "No."

"Atsumu?" Sakusa frowns, watching him stride to his closet, a hand rubbing each material until he's pulled Sakusa's most expensive suit jacket, one that he stopped wearing since his demotion, flinging it to his head. It's a standard midnight black, but sewn into the fabric are shimmers of the tiniest stones.

He used to wear that when he went to functions on behalf of the PSB with Akaashi.

"Do you want to marry me?"

He looks up, sitting at the foot of the bed as Atsumu faces his closet. There are bruises lining his neck and on the insides of his thighs, as well as fading ones from bumping into the corner of tables on his hip. His back is straight and the swell of muscles are apparent as he tenses.

"I can't marry y—"

"Pretend that we're normal people!" Atsumu almost shouts. His voice is thin and frail, like Sakusa can snap him in half, "Pretend we're not Shepherd 2 and Hound 1 and answer me!"

His neck is tight. Sakusa will have to massage the area for half an hour so Atsumu won't bitch about it at night. He feels heat creep up his forehead and cheeks.

The clouds parted. He sees the shadows of his blinds appear on his far wall, making half of Atsumu's body glow.

He looks at the floor, struggling to work his vocal cords. What comes out is strangled.

" _Of course._ "

A huff of breath. Sakusa rubs at his eyes so he can see his feet in focus again, seeing that Atsumu's legs have turned in his direction.

"Wear that and get up."

Sakusa opens his mouth to argue when a pair of pants lands on his head, followed by a shirt and his seven bottles of hair products bouncing on the mattress.

Monsoon Atsumu rounds up Akaashi and Komori by nearly kicking down their doors. They're all shoved into his car and Atsumu files the paperwork for three latent criminals going out into the city just as he presses on the engine button and peels out of the parkade.

"Where—" Komori yawns, groggy. Sakusa gives his cousin a look of sympathy; he's never woken up earlier than noon since he became a latent criminal. Akaashi is helping him fix his tie, looking like Atsumu dragged him out of bed himself, "—Where are we going?"

Sakusa looks around, noting the pink petals dancing through the air, the stray cats sitting on top of fences, the yard drones trimming trees, people out for morning jogs, the elderly sitting in a small park with assistant drones hovering nearby, until Atsumu turns into a familiar neighbourhood.

"Stay in here," Atsumu huffs, "I have to lock all of you in."

"Is that his house?" Akaashi asks with his mouth open, watching Atsumu run inside a home with a front yard. Sakusa looks at the maple tree outside and the way Atsumu has botched his parking in his haste. "Why are we here?"

"I've been asking that myself since morning," Sakusa says, watching in alarm as Atsumu comes out with his hair gelled back, tugging his parents out and pointing to a grey sedan parked next to the garage.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sakusa growls, watching the grey car follow them. Atsumu ignores him. Akaashi and Komori are giving each other mystified looks in the backseat. 

"Something that'll piss Sibyl off," Atsumu laughs, coming to a stop in front of a place Sakusa could never go without permission.

Sakusa looks down at Iizuna's and Osamu's gravestones, flitting his eyes nervously between Atsumu's parents throwing their son puzzled looks and his too formal get up, though it's usually what he wears every day to the office. Akaashi and Komori are trying very hard not to be noticed, though Atsumu is shuffling them to stand in a certain formation.

"Kaa-san," Atsumu claps a hand on Sakusa's shoulder, "I'm marrying him."

Sakusa whips his head around so fast there's an audible crack, " _Atsumu!_ "

"I want to tell you all together," He glances down at Osamu's gravestone, "So he can be here too."

Atsumu's mother is wearing a purple turtleneck, blinking her large, hazel eyes towards Sakusa, "Are you the man my son has been seeing?"

"No," He starts, "I'm not, I'm an Enforcer."

He watches as the father tilts his head up in shock, mouth dropping and pulling on his wife's elbow to tug her back. Atsumu steps in front of him, almost like he's trying to shield Sakusa, "Kaa-san, look, he used to be an Inspector just like me, you don't need to panic."

"I'm not panicking," She recovers, before scolding her husband, "Yoichi, that's enough. Osamu was an Enforcer too, remember?"

Yoichi turns beet red, releasing her elbow. He murmurs an apology to Sakusa that he accepts before Atsumu's mother asks him a question.

"Are you Sakusa-kun?"

"...Yes?"

She smiles, the wrinkles near her eyes crinkling, "My son often said how tall you are in real life," She turns and spots Akaashi trying to blend into the background, "You must be Akaashi-kun, right? You have sea-blue eyes. And that must be Komori-kun."

Sakusa stares wordlessly at the short woman, her temples streaked with grey, brown hair twisted into a bun. He looks away from her when Atsumu tugs on his sleeve.

"Your ego must be massive right now, Samu, all of us gathered here just so you can watch," Atsumu says fondly, standing between Iizuna and his twin.

Atsumu's step-father, as it turns out, is a civil celebrant. Sakusa feels his throat close up, clutching onto Atsumu's and definitely creating indents in his skin from his human nails.

They both choke through the vows, promising to respect each other, to cherish one another, even in sickness and health, until death separates them. The air is punctuated with sniffles from his cousin and Atsumu's mother.

And kissing Atsumu feels like sinking into his pillow after a long day, a sweet, chaste first kiss as applauses brings them out of their thoughts. Atsumu is wiping his tears, nose red, with a thumb, wondering why Sakusa's so particularly weepy this morning. 

"I'm twenty-five today."

Those words trigger the waterworks to appear again. Komori hands over his entire tissue pack, sniffling and rubbing his nose on the sleeve of his coat as Sakusa tilts his head back to hold his tears back by sheer will. It's a beautiful day, there's not a cloud in sight now that the sun has reached its zenith. 

Pictures are taken hastily and when Atsumu is distracted with his mother sobbing into her hands, Sakusa wanders over to the two graves.

"I'll bring you two something next time."

A breeze tickles his skin. He thinks he could hear both of them laughing about his warbled voice.

Yachi stares as Atsumu walks up to Sakusa in the bullpen, pulling out a box from his pocket and sliding a band on his fourth finger.

Then she shrieks, cries and sobs over the pictures Atsumu shares, accusing them of hiding it all from her as Akaashi laughs so loudly the Inspectors and Enforcers walking from the bathrooms peer into their office to see what's going on. Sakusa turns beet red for an entire hour as Yachi orders a panel in the wall so the kitchens can bring up some champagne.

"Don't drink so much, your Hue will cloud," He warns her. She nods and hugs his middle, then hugs Atsumu and blubbers all over his shirt.

Atsumu links the band to Sakusa's wristwatch, watching the ring hidden by a hologram.

"Why are you hiding it?" Yachi asks.

"Just to be professional at work," Atsumu smiles, Yachi making a noise when he leans in and kisses Sakusa's burning cheek, "And so Omi-kun's not staring at it all day."

"You wish," He aims a kick at Atsumu's shins, watching him dance away. Atsumu goes back to his desk then, sorting through all the files Osamu had and trying to see if he left clues.

Feeling his gaze on him, Atsumu looks up and winks at him. Sakusa chokes on his champagne. Akaashi snickers.

He and Akaashi are standing on the rooftop garden at night, watching people the size of ants below them walk, sipping a bottle of wine they're sharing. Atsumu and Yachi are off attending an event and Division Two is on call until the morning shift takes over.

"It's not registered, is it?"

Sakusa shakes his head, looking at the ring. It's a standard wedding band, no embellishments on it, the metal smooth and bright. He wonders if Atsumu had been so excited to order one that he forgot to get a ring for himself too, "Enforcers can't marry."

Akaashi smiles into his glass, "Regardless, I'm happy for you."

"...Thank you."

"What's this?" Sakusa says, watching Atsumu engrossed in the late night news, "Shower's free."

Atsumu hums, looking at the screen, "Five people from the National Diet were killed, these are their replacements. Yacchan and I met them the other day."

Sakusa joins him on the couch, looking at the empty plates they haven't cleared yet, the coffee table full of Sakusa's many watercolor kits and brushes haphazardly placed on top of wet paper towels. He watches politicians shaking hands with each other as Atsumu shivers.

"Ugh," He gestures to the screen to a man who has transferred his brain and brain stem into a cyborg body. His smile is a little scary, and there's something unsettling about his eyes, "Would you ever want to do that, Omi-kun? Be half immortal?"

"No," He wrinkles his nose, getting creeped out by the unblinking eyes, "It's unnatural."

The conversation is cut short when Komori calls him, ordering them to the lab. Atsumu borrows one of his black dress shirts, slightly stretching the fabric and wiggles back into his light grey pants.

"I found one so far," Komori gestures to an untitled document that was saved onto Osamu's files. His cousin looks like he could use some sleep, the bags beneath his eyes dark. Atsumu eagerly looks at the screen.

"' _Single relay point. SIBYL_ ,'" Sakusa reads out.

"Single relay point," Atsumu murmurs, immediately shaking Komori out of his chair. Komori jumps up, sharing a look at Sakusa who shrugs.

"What's a single relay point?" Komori hisses into his ear.

Sakusa doesn't know, "He'll tell us eventually," He goes to the wall panel to order something for Komori to eat, watching the table slide open as a tray of hot food pops up. He wants to help Atsumu, but he's focused right now and he doesn't want to interrupt his concentration.

And Atsumu will ask him for help if he needs it.

He and Komori watch the news from a hologram, his cousin yawning and eventually falling asleep the minute the program finishes. Sakusa turns to Atsumu, careful not to disturb Komori's head on his shoulders.

"Atsumu," He calls out quietly.

The blond doesn't reply, typing away. Sakusa shuts his eyes and crosses his arms, falling asleep to the sound of keys clicking.

He doesn't wake up to Atsumu shaking his shoulders. Instead, there's late afternoon sun streaming in the usually dark lab and Yachi is hovering above him, her eyebrows pulled together.

"Yachi?" Sakusa yawns, noticing that Komori is being shaken beside him by Akaashi, whose mouth is also flattened into a thin line, "What is it?"

She taps on her wristwatch. Sakusa stares at the Area Stress Level, Atsumu's headshot spinning above the watch face with the alarms ringing about a new latent criminal detected.

Chief Kasei orders all of them to meet in one of the many lecture halls in the PSB building. Sakusa had changed and dressed himself in the first things his fingers touched, moving on auto-pilot, feeling the material of one of his more expensive silk dress shirts around his torso. He decided to forego the tie.

He's confused and tired and worried sick. No one knows what's going on. No one is telling him anything.

"What's going on?" He hisses, looking as more Inspectors and Enforcers enter the room. One more person and all of Criminal Investigations would be present.

Akaashi looks angry enough to bite his head off. All of them have been handed their Dominators when they walked in, "I don't _know_. All I know is that I was woken up and directed to find you and Komori. Did Atsumu say something to you? He was looking into something Komori found, right?"

"He was," Sakusa grins his teeth together, "But I fell asleep and when I woke up, he's gone."

Akaashi rakes a hand through his hair before sitting up as the Chief walks in, Yachi hot at her heels as she spots them.

"Ya—"

She shakes her head at Sakusa.

"We have a runaway Inspector on our hands at this moment," The Chief says in a cold voice. Everyone sits up a little straighter, "Miya Atsumu has been found hacking into the Sibyl System in an attempt to destroy the software that performs cymatic brain scans."

Sakusa opens his mouth to protest before Akaashi yanks him back into his chair.

"We have no choice but to hunt him down," Kasei sternly tells them, "The Sibyl System must be protected at all cost as it's the only technology that protect our city from criminals. The security software thankfully started in time, preventing him to take full control of the system. However, he's a computing science major and has been working as a senior systems engineer prior to his position in Division One, and no doubt he's able to eventually work around the firewall if given the chance."

"He's a hacker?" Someone incredulously asks.

"Yes."

Sakusa stands up, ripping his arm out of Akaashi's hold, " _That's bullshit!_ "

The entire auditorium turn their heads at him. Sakusa feels his ears heat, watching Chief Kasei coolly turn in his direction, "And why is that, Sakusa-kun?"

"He wouldn't do something like this," He argues, looking around at some of the Inspectors that were trained alongside him, the Enforcers who saw him rise and fall. He makes eye contact with Kiyoko from Division Two, Kuroo of Division Three, "He's an honest character!"

Silence meets his statement. Bokuto speaks up, frowning, "But we all saw the way he treated you. He's horrible."

His blood runs cold. Sakusa shakes his head, "It was all a misunderstanding! He worked for the Ministry of Technology, yes, but he's—"

" _A latent criminal_ ," Kasei points out. The screen behind her changes to display Atsumu's most recent Hue, a darkening gold that borderlines brown, "This was caught on the street scanners this morning when he ran out of Headquarters."

"You're mistaken!" Sakusa orders, ignoring Yachi's pleas for him to sit down, "There was confusion between us due to what happened between his brother and I, that's all. We've apologized to each other and moved on!"

Kiyoko looks away from his eyes. Sakusa turns his head to Kuroo, who looks lost, arm being tugged by Bokuto. Sakusa spins around to see Yachi gaze away, as if she's ashamed to be associated with him.

Where are the analysts? Where are his cousin and Yaku? He looks around, spotting Ushijima's pinched expression and Semi's unhappy one in the section next to his. No one is willing to make eye contact with him.

"He's angry at the Sibyl System because of the fate his brother was placed in. To me, that is enough motive to suddenly change his career to take Sibyl down," Kasei announces, clapping her hands, "You're all to break off into your Divisions. Inspectors will lead the operations, we must—" She raises her voice above Sakusa's, "—protect the city from shutting down at all costs."

Everyone stands.

Kasei lowers her tone, making eye contact with Sakusa, "I'll be counting on each and every one of you."

"Don't fucking tell me you believe the shit that came out of her mouth!" He yells in the parkade. 

"I don't!" Yachi screams back. Division Two heads off towards the north part of town, the paddy wagon leaving as Kiyoko and Ushijima drives away. Kuroo and Iwaizumi goes off next, Division Three's van following the cars. "But the evidence is incriminating! A darkened Hue, him suddenly disappearing, his motives, they all add up!"

"He wouldn't do this," Sakusa begs, glaring into her eyes, "Yachi, he wouldn't. I don't know why he suddenly took off but there must be a _reason_."

She doesn't tell him he's been emotionally compromised. She just asks him to stay back at Headquarters and assist the Analysts if he's able to.

Akaashi shoots him an unreadable look, eyes heavy, as he joins Yachi in her car. Division One races off to follow everyone else, leaving Sakusa alone in the parkade.

He kicks a garbage can, watching the metal cylinder fly through the air and landing several meters away.

Confined to Headquarters, he has nowhere else to go but return to either the lab, the CID floor or his dormitory. No doubt Komori is being forced to join the manhunt with Yaku. He doesn't know a single thing about single relay points understand what Atsumu had discovered and made him run, and even if he did, the scanners on the street will find him the moment he steps out of Headquarters and send Inspectors to shoot him for disobeying orders.

Sakusa disables Mocha the moment he steps through, not in the mood to be greeted by his yappy security dog and being told he needs to take a mental health day before he catches sight of the dishes from yesterday's dinner that hasn't been cleared.

As he scrubs his plates, gloves protecting his hands, he thinks about Atsumu's motives, picking him apart like he would with any other criminals.

Hues can be falsified, it's one of the things he remembers lecturing Atsumu about, in the first suicidal bomber case that occurred. But he doesn't see Atsumu frequently pop pills and the Hue cleansers on the market only lasts for a few hours.

And he doesn't think Atsumu can make them himself. Sakusa had to explain his sleep medication to him when he found them tucked in a drawer one time, the words alpha blockers and SSRI antagonists met with blank looks.

If what Kasei told him is the truth, that Atsumu is a hacker aiming to take down the Sibyl System, then he did a lot of unnecessary things in his quest. There was no need to befriend all the Inspectors on the floor, there was no need to sleep with him, or to reconcile with Sakusa himself.

It wasn't like Sakusa occupied a higher seat of power that Atsumu could use for himself. He was only an Enforcer, they're looked down upon in society.

And there was certainly no need for Atsumu to drag his parents out of their home so they could repeat wedding vows to each other in front of Osamu and Iizuna with Sakusa's closest friends and family around him. And there was no need for a ring.

He sets the plates aside, crouching and staring unseeingly at his floors, surrounded by dry watercolor paintings of their friends.

"Why couldn't you have left me a note?" 

The floor doesn't answer.

A voice speaks up. 

Sakusa stops. He stands up, looking at the kitchen counter where he'd placed his Dominator down, the blue light blinking softly as Sibyl's voice echoes in his room.

" _Enforcer Sakusa Kiyoomi. It is time you learn the truth._ "

Sakusa stares at the main entrance of the PSB building, looking warily down at the Dominator in his hand, "You're sure...I can step outside?"

" _Of course. We have cleared your movements, you are free to go across the building complex and enter NONA Tower_."

Sakusa gives the gun a distrustful look. The sun has set, though the skies are still pink and purple. The double doors split apart when they sense him approach.

Sakusa takes a timid step outside, smelling flowers and the warmer promises of summer in the wind. He gazes at the tall buildings around him a bit before Sibyl urges him to continue moving.

"You haven't told me what this is about," He frowns, crossing the street. No one gives him looks, going about their merry way to pubs and restaurants with friends and coworkers. 

" _It will be much easier to show you_ ," Sibyl says as he enters NONA Tower from a side door and heads for the basement, avoiding office workers. 

Sakusa gives the gun a shake, frustrated. He stops at a dead end, wondering if this is Kasei's twisted idea of keeping him busy so he wouldn't chase after the other Inspectors, "You said you know where Miya is."

The dead end shimmers. A staircase leading down appears.

Sakusa stares before Sibyl prompts him again, " _Please proceed inside. Watch your step_."

"I thought NONA Tower only has 4 basement levels," He sharply says, looking around left and right, "This seems like a breach of information."

" _What you will be shown is the brain and heart of the world, as well as Miya Atsumu's location._ "

He warily steps onto the landing, peering down to see the staircase continuing deeper into NONA Tower's lower levels. There's almost nothing to illuminate the passage, only the light blue hue of emergency lights every few feet, enough to show him where to place his footing.

Sibyl seems to sense his hesitation, " _Please proceed and watch your step_."

Everything in his fiber is screaming at him to not go down there.

A memory of Atsumu hugging his pillow flashes by. Sakusa steels himself. He's excellent in martial arts and has a Dominator and Sibyl on his side. There's no reason for him to be afraid of the dark.

Sakusa descends, down and down, into the heart of the world until the stairs ends and there's just a short tunnel in front of him. He stares at it and hears something from above, like someone is pursuing him. Or was that a figment of his imagination?

His mouth is dry. He takes a deep breath and touches his wedding band, unable to be seen with to the hologram hiding it, as he moves forward into a bright space full of light.

A span of yellow tiles stretches from one end of the room all the way to the back. Metal beams above him gleam, robotic arms with grippers moving left and right, transporting something pink in rectangular cubes rising from one section to another. The brightness takes some time to adjust, and he frowns, holding up his hand to shield his eyes before it sets in.

Brains.

Brains in housed containers, placed on pedestals, moving from one area to the next, like a machine.

" _This is the truth of the Sibyl System._ "

He stares at it all, the efficient cacophony making horror rise. The Sibyl System? Wasn't it a supercomputer? "What is all of this?"

"Thank you for being a good bait, Sakusa-kun."

He whirls around to see Chief Kasei dragging Atsumu's body, his arms and legs trailing after her.

"Atsumu!" He lunges across, diving to his knees as Kasei releases her grip on him. He pats Atsumu's shoulders hard, "Hey! Atsumu!"

Atsumu's eyes flutters open, dazed at first, as if he'd been struck at the head, before he gasps and looks around, at the brains housed in their yellow containers, at Kasei pointing her Dominator at both of them, at Sakusa bending over him.

"You idiot!" Atsumu barks, sitting up and looking mostly unharmed save for his split lip, "You shouldn't have followed the Dominator!"

"I followed it because they said they would lead me to you!" Sakusa yells, looking up and snarling at Kasei. He pushes them back to create space, "What did you do to him?"

Atsumu pulls Sakusa behind himself, arms spread to hide as much of Sakusa as possible, "Don't trust her! I'm pretty sure she knows the real reason behind Osamu's and Iizuna's death!"

Kasei lowers her gun. 

Sakusa stares at her, watching her arm drop completely as she laughs, cruel and quiet.

"Not bad. Care to tell me how you figured it out?"

"'Single relay point,'" Atsumu spits.

"Single relay point," Kasei repeats, looking at Sakusa, "You spent all night and most of the early morning tracking the flow of information from various data points. From your Dominator, from street scanners, from the Sibyl system itself, before you found one point where all information intersects at least once."

"The true body of the Sibyl System couldn't fit under Headquarters even though that's the most logical place to look since there's a helipad on the roof," Atsumu growls.

"And?"

"I searched for the next best tower owned by the Ministry of Welfare and it directed me here. There's a radio tower on the top that would allow information to be passed to the furthest edges of the city's grid. And I can tell immediately by pulling up the energy distribution that this place uses quite a lot of electricity despite its cover as an office tower."

"We hid those energy distribution data."

"Not hidden well enough for someone like me," Atsumu laughs.

"Your brother found out about this by accident as well during his fruitless search into the bombings a year ago. I should've kept a closer eye on you," She has a mocking smile now.

"How many people are aware that you're a drone?"

"Chief Kasei's a drone?" Sakusa finally finds his voice, peeking over Atsumu's shoulders. He stands up, staring at the Chief in horror before noticing the tear in her ankle length skirt and scrape on her leg, revealing a smooth metallic surface that he's familiar with.

His right wrist aches.

"It's necessary for me to operate from a body like this because my brain is—"

She points to the sea of yellow tiles.

Atsumu's laugh echoes all around them, "You're mad. All of you are mad! How..." He trails off as Sakusa turns his head at the brains being lifted in and out of the floor, " _Why? You're telling me that our lives have all been judged by people like us?_ "

"Do you know what it takes to be a member of the Sibyl System?" When she turns around, her eyes are glowing in the same blue light Sakusa sees whenever members of the PSB are connected to Dominators, "You must be able to view actions from an objective standpoint, setting aside emotions. This is especially important."

Sakusa thinks about his Psycho Pass report every morning, of the number that mocked him, forcing him to be a pawn to society. And now the number comes not from a supercomputer they were all thought to believe, but from _people_ —

"And you must be criminally asymptomatic. That is, the system will be a step closer to perfection if it's run by people who deviate from it," She raises the Dominator to her own head, Sibyl's voice echoing all around them.

" _The Chief of the Ministry of Welfare Public Safety Bureau. Crime Coefficient is zero. Not a target for enforcement action. Trigger will be locked_."

"We all take turns moving around in bodies similar to this one," She gestures to herself, pulling the gun down, "Currently, my brain is housed in this unit. There are other units all around the country, running the economy, protecting the public, striving towards a better future for socie—"

"Don't you dare give me that crap!" Atsumu points a finger at her, "You're telling me that we were fed a lie from the very beginning of the Sibyl System trial? That instead of a supercomputer with the ability to match-make, assign jobs and take cymatic scans of the population in order to quantify criminality, the system is powered by the brains of _criminals?_ "

" _We are not normal criminals_ ," Kasei and Sibyl speaks, " _We all are able to put aside our emotions to judge, without sympathy or empathy, the actions of every single member of this country. We are better than computers_. _We are able to foresee the best actions everyone can take to reach maximum happiness. The world is made better by us._ "

" _Tyranny_."

Atsumu turns his head to look at Sakusa.

"A system where you're telling others what to do," He repeats, "It's called tyranny. It's what you're trying to accomplish right? I just figured it out. Those bombings targeting politicians, governors, lawmakers, directors, tycoons, you're trying to spread your web across government and other sections of the country and rule them. I'm sure that those newly elected officials are also people like you too."

Kasei smiles, "Very good."

"Why did you use those people as your pawns?" Sakusa asks, voice sharp, "The ones who agreed to be bombers?"

Sibyl answers, " _We have judged those victims and found them of near no use, with criminality nearing latent levels, and as such, have no purpose in furthering society._ "

He thinks about Kisaragi Midori running for her life, the office worker who had called them sheep for jumping off a cliff when Sibyl orders them to and all the citizens being manipulated by Kasei and Sibyl so they can achieve the greater good when they spewed garbage about striving towards a better future for humanity.

_"Will you sit here as a murderer and pass it off as something the system forced you to do when it's your finger that pulled the trigger?! Will you leap off a cliff if Sibyl tells you to jump?"_

"You should've left them alone!"

"I needed to throw you off the scent," Kasei says, "A hunting dog's nose is quite sharp and in cases, you need to use bait so they're distracted."

Something in Sakusa burns.

"Then tell me this," He hisses, "What did you do to Osamu and Iizuna?"

" _After Miya Osamu and Iizuna Tsukasa found out the truth of the Sibyl System like his twin did, we compared and considered the benefits and consequences of allowing them to know the truth of the Sibyl System and judged against it_. _They were eliminated_."

Kasei stares at him, "They got to where you two are standing before I came, alerted by my coworkers."

"Did you use my Dominator?"

" _No. We falsified your handling records to reflect that._ "

Sakusa stares at her before breathing out in relief. Atsumu turns to him as he slumps over, "So I didn't kill them."

" _You're relieved,_ " Sibyl notes.

Sakusa glares, "I wouldn't think people like you would understand. I'm relieved because I've been dreaming that I was responsible for their deaths!"

" _We are aware of how you think, Sakusa Kiyoomi. We have seen into your brain and heart_ ," Sibyl echoes, " _Despite the shock and disgust you feel upon the discovery of the truth of the universe, you will not bite the hand of your master_."

Atsumu turns his head around to him, eyes wide. Sakusa's wrist aches and aches.

" _You have acknowledged the fact that the current system has its failures, such as the widespread of Eustress Syndrome and the presence of those criminally asymptomatic. In this world, there are no such thing as a perfect system, though we are the closest thing to one_."

He bares his teeth, just wondering how much the cymatic scans have been reading him. His Dominator had been tossed to the floor the moment Kasei dragged Atsumu through the tunnel.

" _You realized that current social order cannot be preserved without Sibyl, as the citizens are accustomed and rely on our services. To expose them of the truth right now would bring lawlessness and disorder to the entire country. The government is ill-prepared to face consequences of a larger riot than the one you were in one year ago_.

" _You value our necessity slightly more. And that is why we value your ethics and standards, as if reflects our own._ "

He feels his face twist, "Ethics?" He'd been killing people left and right in what he thought was justice, but it turns out every single one of them are puppets yanked by strings. "How can you tell me you value ethics when you've been judging people from the very beginning?!"

" _Then think_ ," Sibyl says, " _If we are back in the time prior to the Sibyl System and there is a serial murderer on the loose and a significant lack of evidence pointed towards them, the murderer would be released into the public. They will kill again and again, until they're satisfied_.

" _But with the Sibyl System, we are able to read into their souls and look past cases that are too clean, too perfect. We expose the truth and deliver justice. You cannot deny this_."

He's biting in the inside of his cheek so hard his mouth is full of blood, "I can't deny it, but what makes you think I agree with this method?"

" _The chance of you exposing us is nil. You have weighed the situation and concluded that this secret must be kept from the public for now. Your straightforward thinking and pragmatism is a valuable asset we recognized in your job aptitude test_."

The room turns quiet save for the whirring of the mechanical grippers shifting brains around. He hates being read like an open book to everyone. 

He hates that Sibyl is right.

He hates the fact that he was one of those sheep herded to the edge of the cliff. He'd believed that Sibyl could truly judge motives and thoughts, but the scenery of a utopia shattered the moment he met Osamu and cracks appeared.

And he thinks about everyone above the basement, some nine million people in the Tokyo proper alone, believing that they could wander the streets safely because criminals were apprehended before they could strike, but that's not the truth is it? There are criminals who aren't recognized by Sibyl, who are walking free.

" _An Inspector registered in the Ministry of Welfare Public Safety Bureau. Crime Coefficient is seventy-eight—ty three— Crime Coefficient is three hundred and ninety-three, aim— safety will be locked. Aim carefully and eliminate the target._ "

Sakusa acts without thinking. He lunges forward.

Then Atsumu's shouting and there's a burning pain encompassing Sakusa's entire left leg before he falls. Sakusa reacts, lungs sucking in the air as his hands gravitate towards his left leg to find nothing.

He looks down and sees the giant blood stain on the floor, some of the tiles near him splattered with blood. There are chunks of flesh nearby— and something white sticking out of the end of his left thigh, covered in blood and leaking a fluid.

He looks up, temple pressing against the ground, to see Atsumu's mouth moving, a crazed look as he yanks Kasei's arm to the side, twisting against the natural bend of her elbow as the blue light from the Destroy Decomposer hits her temples, the blast taking out the top half of her body and most of the wall behind them as Atsumu leaps back, uninjured, whole.

Sakusa must have lost consciousness because the next thing he knows, someone is slapping him.

Atsumu hovers above him. The lights around them are flickering. The mechanical arms have stopped moving for now. There's scorch marks on the ground near the yellow tiles. Some of the pedestals are leaking fluid.

"Shh, sshhh," Atsumu soothes, voice tight. Sakusa can hear someone wheezing, pulling air quickly between their lips, "You're fine, you're fine."

"Atsumu," He repeats the name like a prayer, gazing into his golden eyes. He feels too weak to support his head, being lifted into Atsumu's arms. There's a belt strapped around his thigh.

"My—"

"I'm sorry," Atsumu says, picking him up as they climb out of the room. The stairs loom ahead as tears drip onto Sakusa's hands. Atsumu's voice is wrecked, "You're— you're going to be f-fine— it'll be fine, it'll be fine, you'll be fine."

Sakusa presses his fingers on Atsumu's face, hard, " _Breathe_."

Atsumu has to put him down temporarily. Sakusa balances himself while clutching the handrails of the stairs leading back up to the 4th basement floor of the NONA Tower. He nearly falls over, but he's not going to out of sheer madness.

Behind them, the lights lighting up the true form of the Sibyl System dies. They're plunged into darkness.

"You have to run."

"I'm not going to leave you here," Atsumu whispers at him, sounding too tired to even raise his voice, "Don't be stupid."

"Sibyl knows I won't do anything, you have to get out of here—" Sakusa looks up to see that the blue emergency lights have winked out, "—What did you do? The entire tower is dark."

"The Destroy Decomposer took out some of those brains when I destroyed Kasei," Atsumu lifts him again, going up the stairs slowly, step by step, "Stop arguing with me, we need to get you to a hospital."

Sakusa digs his nails into Atsumu's shoulders, hearing the material of his shirt creak, "You're not turning yourself over just so you can save me!"

"Then what do you want me to do, Kiyoomi?!"

His nose runs. Atsumu looks ragged, favoring one leg more than the other as Sakusa's stomach twists from the rocking motion of them moving up. His voice comes out soft, "Run."

"And leave here you to bleed out? Don't joke around with me."

"You'll be executed once the emergency power starts again. There's a bounty on your head, all Divisions are on the lookout to bring you in—"

"So fucking let them!" Atsumu hisses, "I'd rather die than leave you here!"

Sakusa rubs his tears out of his eyes, "You're so stupid!"

"You're stupid too! Idiot! Asshole! You think your life doesn't matter? You'll be walking again in no time once they patch you up! _I'm_ done for, the entire city will go full out on a manhunt to find me! Just shut up and let me take care of you!"

They reach the basement. Sakusa clutches onto Atsumu's shirt as hard as he can, head spinning. 

There must be a way to get out. He's safe, he's always safe as long as he agrees to heed by Sibyl, but once the city regains its power and Sibyl catches up, there's nowhere to conceal Atsumu.

"Hide."

"A wanted man can't hide in this city."

"Then live in the outskirts. Live in abandoned areas, in the wild where Sibyl's grasps are minimal," Atsumu gives him an incredulous look, "You're an Inspector and you've worked for the Ministry of Technology, you know exactly how to disable cameras and avoid street scanners. Nothing is working right now!"

It's night time outside. With the citywide blackout, they tilt their heads up, seeing stars twinkle, bright and showing through the light pollution that usually obscures them.

"Live," He begs.

There was always a low thrum of electricity in the background, but with half of the power grid cut off, Sakusa hears nothing but Atsumu's shoes on the pavement, the faraway sirens of the cruisers patrolling coming closer and closer.

Atsumu lowers Sakusa just outside the front doors.

Sakusa slowly loosens his fingers from the death grip he had on Atsumu's shirt, memorizing every single detail of his face. The split lip, the disheveled hair, the red-rimmed eyes, his stolen shirt on Atsumu's body, the light grey pants, his expensive shoes.

How he smells his like sheets when they kiss, "Okay," Atsumu brushing away his tears, eyes tight, "This is goodbye, I guess. You'll be hunting me next time we meet."

"Then make sure I never catch you."

Sakusa takes off his ring, the hologram crackling apart to reveal the band of gold. He shoves it onto Atsumu's finger, watching it get stuck around his second knuckle. He pulls back and slides it over his pinkie, where it fits snugly.

"I'm letting you borrow that."

Atsumu laughs wetly. The sirens are coming closer now. Any minute, Inspectors will return from their patrol and find Sakusa on death's door. Yachi will be crying again. Komori's definitely going to give him a lecture when Sakusa wakes up.

"You're always saving me," Atsumu's voice cracks. Sakusa's vision blurs, "First with the bomb in the hospital, and just now—"

The sirens are just around the corner.

Sakusa pushes him, "Go!"

Atsumu stares at him, looking like a lost child, like the drunkard who had begged him to bring Osamu back, the man who cooked him breakfast, a soft smile on the edges of his lips, the one who cried while he repeated vows. 

He presses a kiss to Sakusa's cheeks, nose, and forehead before drawing away.

"I'll come back for you one day," He mumbles against his lips, Sakusa clutching onto his wrist like it's the last time he'll ever see him, before Atsumu pulls back and disappears into the darkness.

And Sakusa will remember the way the night cloaked around his shoulders, of another person leaving.

Just right when he sees Yachi fling her car door aside, face going pale as she sees the pool of blood around him, Sakusa faints.

It's pouring again.

" _This is the Criminal Investigations Department of the Public Safety Bureau. Access to this street is restricted for the safety of residents. All residents are expected to comply and evacuate immediately. I repeat, this is the Criminal Investigations...._ "

The van comes to a smooth stop and Sakusa raises his head up at the echoes of an automatic lock hissing open. An unwilling smile is tugged out of him despite the irony.

He gives the sky a despairing look. He's right back where he started, essentially, walking with an even shorter leash on him this time. A full year after Osamu's and Iizuna's death and losing another limb and he's surprised Sibyl allowed him to walk free.

The new Chief, having a different brain and personality but still using Kasei Joshu's face and body, had promoted him when the power came back on and personally visited his hospital room with flowers. White roses with red edges. Secrecy and unity.

"Why not kill me and get it over with?"

"The system thinks there is still some value and use in you," Kasei told him. This version smiled more than the previous owner, razor sharp and unforgiving, "Do not disappoint us, Sakusa-kun."

The official story of how Sakusa ended up outside Headquarter's doors without scanners flagging him was that Kasei personally selected him to aid her in chasing Atsumu down since he was the closest PSB officer in a mile's radius. When he was injured, Kasei ordered a drone to carry him to the front doors and continued in pursuit of Atsumu.

But by the time he was shot, Atsumu had escaped. 

Sakusa was given a medal and a hefty promotion the day after he was discharged from the hospital, using a crutch as he limped on stage and drone cameras flashed to take his picture.

Akaashi and Yachi doesn't ask questions. Yachi, because she thinks it's a sore subject for Sakusa, and Akaashi kept his silence because Sakusa had shook his head at him and said, "It's too dangerous."

"I'm an Enforcer, what can be more dangerous to us?"

Sakusa gave him a level look, leaning on the 20th floor's outdoor garden as he spots green dotting the city. He shakes his head, "I can't tell you, Kasei's orders."

The new Inspector next to him trembles, pulling him out of his thoughts, "Are those the Enforcers?"

"Yes," He says, hearing his wristwatch ring. He gives an impassive look to Hinata, wondering if the younger Inspector knows his past. Word travels fast around the Bureau, "They're people like you and I."

Beside him, Yachi manages a tired smile, "The CID is very short on man-power right now, Hinata-kun, it's bad luck that you're assigned to Division One right after you finished training."

"I don't mind at all!" Hinata chirps, watching Akaashi and Bokuto step out of the van. Yachi tells him that they'll both be here to offer him guidance.

"I'll be taking a voicemail," He tells Yachi, watching her zip the blue MWPSB jacket over her suit. She nods, watching him slightly limp. Just like his hand, his new leg works fine except when the clouds gather together and send aches to his brain.

He retreats to the furthest corner in the tent for some privacy.

" _Hey_. _You wouldn't believe where I am now, but the sunset's beautiful. It reminds me of one of your paintings, actually._ "

He smiles. The aches fades as the rain drowns out everything else.

" _And I know you're just going to ask how I got your new number. Give me some credit, Chief Inspector Omi,_ " There's the sound of seagulls in the background. Sakusa turns his head to see Akaashi, Bokuto, Kageyama and Suna cock their heads curiously at him, Dominators in their hands, " _I'm the hacker that nearly brought Sibyl down. Do you want to hear the name of the project I'm working on?_ "

_Of course I do._

" _It's called Apollo. I thought it would fit, because you know...._ "

He tells him while walking on a beach, the waves crashing on the shore. Sakusa went to the sea a few days ago, bringing Komori along with him as they both sat on the sands and watched the waters. He remembers wishing for Atsumu to be with him in that moment.

"... _I saw you the other day. In a dream of course._ "

_I did too_ , he replies in his head, _We were swimming in the ocean._

Atsumu doesn't speak for a while. The gulls have faded and Sakusa thinks he can hear the wind whistle through the trees and the snap of underbrush and footsteps. What colors are the trees where Atsumu is? Has autumn arrived for him?

" _I hope you're eating well. You should learn to cook actual food instead of eating that synthetic junk,_ " Atsumu mothers like a hen, telling him to sleep well and invest in a better pillow.

_I did,_ he wants to say, _I made mentaiko udon and soup today. Do you not sleep with a pillow, wherever you are?_

Yachi once said to not chase ghosts, but that's all they're doing, aren't they? Chasing, searching for something. A truth, a lie, what their roles are in the universe, how to get over a loss, how to stand on their legs and live again, how to exist.

" _That's all for me now, Omi-kun.... I swear,_ " Atsumu promises, " _I'll come back for you one day_."

The call finishes.

He lowers his watch down from his ears, looking down and seeing the hem of Atsumu's blue jacket draped around him. He took it into his possession the moment he woke up before HR could burn Atsumu's things. His travel sized bottle of cologne joins Sakusa's desk, where Atsumu used to sit, next to Osamu's dog-eared copy of Orwell's 1984 and Iizuna's dog pen.

"Sakusa-san?"

He pretends this is Atsumu for a split second. What would he say to him if they ever cross paths? But the pitch of the voice is all wrong.

He looks up and tells Hinata, "I'll be right there. You may start the investigation with Yachi."

Hinata scampers off. Everyone leaves, pulling hoods over their heads to protect them from the rain. Now it's just him and his thoughts.

He used to wish that he would wake up as an Inspector. Now that he's restored to his old title, he wishes he was an Enforcer again. He fingers the hem of the jacket, the fit just right. He and Atsumu are nearly the same size anyway, and these jackets are mean to be loose.

He strokes his fourth finger with his thumb, feeling the absence of a ring as he opens his mouth, hoping that somewhere in the universe, Atsumu will listen.

He wishes for a day of gold.

"I'll be waiting, Tsumu."

Sakusa pulls his Dominator out of his coat and leaves the warm tent, the plastic covering swishing after him.

**Author's Note:**

> sakusa painting/drawing is an actual thing my own therapist recommended bc im too stress haH. though im no artist, there's something comforting about making lines and loops on the paper. and i always love a good reason to go to muji and buy their 0.38 pens and notebooks. as the year comes to an end, please take care of your body and mind with proper rest, food and mindfulness!
> 
> im working on another sakuatsu next (what is new?), ft concert band and jazz music au. 
> 
> as always, please continue to follow CDC and your public health officers' orders and guidelines. wash those hands and wear masks!


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